France’s prime minister was out and about on Monday mixing with the proles south of Paris. ‘I’m going to shake your hand because you’re all right,’ said one old man, accepting the outstretched hand of Gabriel Attal. ‘But you’ll have tell the president to shut his trap.’
Attal didn’t quite know how to respond, mumbling that he was campaigning for the parliamentary and not the presidential elections. The old man wasn’t finished. ‘Listen, you’re not doing too bad…but the president, he’s the one causing all the trouble.’
‘I don’t want to represent a country that doesn’t correspond to our values,’ said Mbappé, a footballer friend of Emmanuel Macron
It will have been a sobering encounter for Attal, proof of what Marine Le Pen said earlier in the month: that every time Macron opens his mouth he sends more people her way.
So despised is the president of the Republic that some of his Renaissance Party’s candidates have decided not to feature his face on their campaign posters for the parliamentary elections on 30 June and 7 July.
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