Macron can no longer be a Covid authoritarian

Covid cases are on the increase in France, as they are in most European countries, and the scientists who have been silent for months have once more found their voice. At the weekend professor Jean-François Delfraissy called for everyone in France this autumn to have a fourth vaccination, while Alain Fischer, president of the Scientific Council, believes that masks should once more be obligatory in public transport, six weeks after the regulations requiring this were dropped.

But times have changed. Emmanuel Macron is still president but he no longer has an absolute majority in parliament and the days when the National Assembly rubber-stamped every Covid diktat emanating from the Elysée with barely a murmur of dissent are over.

One of the more incongruous aspects of France’s presidential campaign was to hear Marine Le Pen portrayed as a danger to democracy while Emmanuel Macron was held up as the paragon of liberty. Who made it a punishable offence in 2020 to leave your house without a signed declaration stating the reason for being on the street? Who introduced some of the most draconian measures in the West that effectively barred from life anyone who refused to have three vaccines? Who brazenly broke a promise to their people never to implement a law that would segregate society?

Macron deserves to be bracketed with those western leaders – Mark Rutte of Holland, Scott Morrison of Australia, New Zealand’s Jacinda Arden and Justin Trudeau of Canada – who were seized by a nasty authoritarian streak during the Covid crisis.

It’s surely no coincidence that Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon scored best during the presidential and parliamentary elections in the 25 to 60 age group.