I sensed something significant was going to unfold on Sunday as I took my morning coffee at our village café. Enjoying the June sunshine I watched as a steady stream of men and women walked past on their way to the voting booth in the village hall. Forty-eight per cent of them cast their ballot for Jordan Bardella of the National Rally. The next best was Valerie Hayer, representing president Macron’s party; she managed 12 per cent.
The people chose Macron, and got chaos
The voter turnout in my village in Burgundy was 60 per cent, an eight per cent increase on the 2019 elections and 17 per cent superior to 2014. Overall in France, the turnout was 52.5 per cent, the highest in European elections since 1994.
But this election was never about Europe. It was a French mid-term, an opportunity for the people to pass judgement on president Macron two years into his second term. That judgement is damning.
Macron has never been a popular president. He was elected in 2017 almost by default. The favourite, the centre-right former prime minister Francois Fillon, was brought down by a financial scandal, and the Socialist candidate was punished for the sins of the outgoing president, Francois Hollande. That left Marine Le Pen.
Macon styled it as a choice between ‘me or chaos’, a phrase first coined by Charles de Gaulle during the 1965 presidential campaign.
The people chose Macron, and got chaos. Crime, immigration, Islamism and the cost of living have all risen sharply under Macron. In the two years since he was re-elected – defeating Le Pen once more but with a reduced majority – these increases have soared. It’s almost as if Macron, knowing the Constitution precludes his running for a third successive term, has forsaken boring domestic issues for the glamour of the global stage.
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He may enjoy playing this attention but his people are increasingly concerned by his belligerent rhetoric towards Russia. As Marine Le Pen put it last week, ‘you get the feeling that Macron wants a war’.
Furthermore, the French can’t help contrast his bullishness towards Putin with his cowardice towards Islamism. In a long television interview on Thursday evening, Macron spoke of the need to defeat Russia, and to that end France would be supply some fighter jets to Ukraine.
In the same interview he lamented the 300 per cent increase in acts of anti-Semitism in France this year, calling it ‘inexplicable’.
The right-wing leader of the Reconquest party Eric Zemmour, himself a Jew, swiftly offered the president an explication. ‘We are suffering from imported anti-Semitism from the Arab-Muslim culture,’ he said. ‘The more immigrants there are from these countries where this culture has a foothold, the more anti-Semitism there will be in France.’
In one of his first major television interviews as president, in October 2017, Macron vowed that any illegal immigrant who committed an offence ‘of any kind will be deported’. He made his announcement a few days after two young women were stabbed to death at Marseille railway station by a Tunisian.
It was the first major security crisis of his presidency and a stony-faced Macron assured the French ‘he would be ‘uncompromising on this issue’ and he acknowledged that border control had become shambolic. ‘We no longer take all the measures that need to be taken. Well, that’s going to change.’
As Marine Le Pen put it last week, ‘you get the feeling that Macron wants a war’
It hasn’t. It’s got worse. And the two young women murdered in Marseille were the first of a long list of people killed by people who were in France illegally.
During campaigning for the European elections, Macron’s go-to issue was Ukraine and Bardella’s was immigration/ insecurity. The result of the election proves what troubles the French most.
Among the many guests who were in Normandy last week for the D-Day commemorations was Keir Starmer. According to a report in the Sunday Times, the Labour leader made the most of Rishi Sunak’s decision to cut short his time in France by rubbing shoulders with Macron. One of the president’s aides told Starmer that he ‘really liked’ him because he is ‘fascinated by men like him who can suddenly achieve stunning results’.
Presumably then Macron is also a fan of Jordan Bardella, as the result he achieved on Sunday was stunning. His victory in the European elections has forced Macron to call a snap election on 30 June. The second round of voting takes place on 7 July, just three days after Britain goes to the polls to choose its prime minister.
If Starmer is elected Premier he would be advised to look to Macron only as an example of how not to lead. His divisive presidency has been a disaster for France. Anger and demoralisation hangs in the air wherever one goes. It is as well that Macron has called a snap election; had he ignored Sunday’s result and carried on as arrogantly as ever, I suspect there may have eventually been some form of uprising.
Consequently, there is a strong likelihood that the Republic’s next prime minister will be Jordan Bardella, the working-class lad from the Parisian suburbs. One can’t see him and Sir Keir doing much to improve the entente cordiale.
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