In January this year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak outlined his five priorities for Britain against a hazy timetable. Meanwhile in France, after months of parliamentary opposition, strikes and demonstrations against his pension reforms, President Macron’s legislation gained assent by a constitutional sleight of hand. To appease the country’s heightened state of tension in May, Macron pledged to return France to stability and order within ‘one hundred days’. ‘We have before us 100 days of pacification, of unity, of ambition and action in the service of France’. That period expires on 14 July.
An audit of either leader’s achievements to date has its challenges, especially given the recent most violent and widespread riots in France since 1968. But one has to wonder why Macron, attuned to French history, albeit not to his people, chose the period of ‘100 days’ concluding on 14 July. Both dates evoke powerful historical memory in the minds of the French, neither of which flatter France’s president.
Slowly but surely the single beneficiary of this state of affairs is Marine Le Pen
14 July only became France’s national day in 1880.
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