With eight days to go before the first round of voting in the French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron has just had his worst polling so far. The new numbers show that in the second round of voting, presumed to pit Macron against Marine Le Pen just as in 2017, the president has a lead of only six points (53 per cent to 47 per cent). He famously crushed her 66 per cent to 34 per cent five years ago.
Macron has tried to stay aloof from the presidential campaign and position himself instead as the senior European political leader in the Ukraine crisis. His efforts have been clumsy. He’s fired the head of military intelligence for delivering the assessment that Russia was completely incapable of overrunning Ukraine – so would not try. He’s pleaded with Putin without success.
At home he’s flooding the country with subsidies to conceal fuel inflation, even as his war on Covid seems not entirely won.
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