The slow death of Macron’s political dream

Where did it all go wrong for Emmanuel Macron? In his New Year’s Eve address of 2022, France’s president called on his people to demonstrate ‘unity, boldness and collective ambition’ in the year ahead. There would be challenges, he acknowledged, referencing the impending pension reform, but the president expressed his optimism that together they could ‘strengthen our independence, our greatness of spirit’ and build a ‘stronger, fairer France’. 

We can all dream. Macron’s 2023 has been a nightmare, his ‘annus horribilis’, as France has staggered from one disaster to another. Riots, strikes, Islamist attacks, far-right demos, rocketing crime, soaring drug cartel murders, out of control immigration and crises in education, health, housing and public transport.  

Then to cap it off, at the start of this week the Bank of France lowered its growth forecast for the country’s economy for 2023 from 0.9 per cent to 0.8 per cent. Admittedly, France’s central bank did predict the economy will accelerate up to 2026 but perhaps – like its president – it can only talk a good game these days. 

What France is experiencing is the slow death of Macronism, just as a generation ago Blairism expired before the eyes of the British. Like Blair, Macron was young, dynamic and full of optimism when he came to power; in their victory speeches, 20 years apart, their watchword was ‘new’. 

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This was their centrist ‘Third Way’, in Macron’s case navigating a path between the right of Marine Le Pen and the left of Jean-Luc Melenchon. 

From the outset it captured the imagination of a fervent minority, people from Macron’s generation and milieu. Others were more sceptical. In reviewing Macron’s ‘Third Way’, which he set out in his 2016 book, Revolution, the current affairs weekly, Le Point, said his social-liberal philosophy was ‘exciting but still vague…those hoping to discover a detailed political project in Emmanuel Macron’s book will be disappointed…Macron is content to develop a ‘vision, a narrative, a will’.’

That vision was to turn France into a ‘Start-Up Nation’. He thought it would be easy, as his life had been plain sailing up until that point, one success and one promotion after another. He hadn’t reckoned with his people. Few have travelled with him on his journey; most have become increasingly alienated and disenchanted with their president, weary of his arrogance and his insults. He won last year’s presidential election because his opponent was Marine Le Pen, not because he offered hope or inspiration. 

Macron’s political convictions remain vague; there is now a feeling among many that Macron is just a good actor in a sharp suit; certainly his limitations on the international stage have been painfully exposed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza. In both instances Macron, in the words of one veteran political commentator, has appeared like a ‘rabbit in the headlights’. His diplomacy in Africa has been catastrophic. The BBC this week accused Macron of creating ‘widespread resentment among young urban populations across West Africa’. It is his attitude that rankles, what the BBC described as ‘high-handed and over-assertive’. 

The French know all about the president’s attitude problem. Never has there been a more divisive head of state in the Fifth Republic, embodied by this month’s immigration bill imbroglio. In trying to navigate a ‘Third Way’ between a bill that was too lax and one that was too tough, Macron has laid bare the contradictions inherent in Macronism.  

This incoherence was demonstrated by one of Macron’s MPs, Jean-René Cazeneuve, who last week was accused of raging against the dying of the light in a foul-mouthed tirade – which Cazeneuve denies – against the leader of the Greens in the National Assembly. ‘You’ll be shorn at the Liberation for having voted with the National Rally,’ he allegedly snarled at Cyrielle Chatelain, a reference to French women who had their hair shaved after the Liberation in 1944 for fraternising with the German occupier. The Greens and Le Pen’s National Rally had voted against the immigration bill. This week Cazeneuve voted for the bill, along with the National Rally. 

In a blistering editorial on Wednesday, Le Figaro wrote that Macron’s party is ‘in tatters’ because its leader procrastinated for so long over an issue of such grave importance to the French people. Le Figaro attributed this failing to the president’s ‘persistent blindness’ about mass immigration.  

It was the Iraq War that triggered the demise of ‘Blairism’; for Macron the immigration bill is the beginning of the end. The architect of the bill was Bruno Retailleau, the leader in the Senate of the centre-right Republicans. His party was decimated by defections to Macron seven years ago when he launched his En Marche movement, so revenge is sweet. ‘We’ve reached the end of the road for Macronism,’ Retailleau told an interviewer on Wednesday.  The Third Way no longer leads anywhere.