France is tiring of Macron’s gimmicks

President Emmanuel Macron and his freshly installed Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, appointed a new French cabinet this week. It is little more than a reshuffle – and unlikely to lead to sunlit uplands for Macron’s beleaguered presidency. Of particular significance are the two centre-right ministers whose appointment testifies to the continuing rightward drift of the Macronist project in search of that elusive parliamentary working majority. At the same time, and despite all denials, policy is also being drawn rightwards towards the agenda set by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s Rassemblement National on immigration, crime and policing. But the desired effects of the fresh cabinet are already proving vain (as I wrote earlier this week).

The new government has been dubbed Sarkozy IV (after the centre-right president Nicolas Sarkozy, who left office in 2012) for including two of his former ministers: Rachida Dati, who will oversee culture, and Catherine Vautrin, who is charged with leading the mega-ministry of health and work (which has already upset trade unions).