The National Rally presented its manifesto to the French people on Monday ahead of Sunday’s first round of voting in the parliamentary election. ‘I have made my priorities very clear: purchasing power, restoring security and controlling immigration,’ was how the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, summarised the manifesto. ‘I want to embody unity, to bring people together, and I aspire to be the Prime Minister of the French who did not vote for the National Rally.’
The manifesto has been eviscerated by Bardella’s political and media opponents. ‘An economic shipwreck’, was the headline in the left-wing Liberation. Underneath was a tribune signed by ‘The Appalled Economists’, a collective of French thinkers and economists opposed to the neo-liberal orthodoxy. In their view the National Rally’s ‘economic and social proposals create mechanisms for rejecting and stigmatising immigrants and foreigners, which are contrary to the values of the Republic.’
Such a response would have been expected by Bardella. More encouraging is an online poll in the conservative newspaper, Le Figaro, which asked its readers if they thought the manifesto realistic. Of the 180,000 who had responded by Tuesday morning, a slim majority – 51 per cent – said that they did. Le Figarois a business-friendly newspaper, and its readership – traditionally centre-right Republican voters – are a particular target for Bardella, who is seen as more economically liberal than the protectionist and interventionist Marine Le Pen.
Bardella has been courting business leaders for months. Last week he and Eric Ciotti, the president of the Republicans who has allied with the National Rally – to the fury of the party grandees – were interviewed in front of an audience of the country’s business elite. Among the promises made by Bardella were tax stability, lower production taxes and priority for French businesses in public procurement. They received a lukewarm response.
But Bardella knows that if he does become PM his fiercest foe will not be business but the ‘Blob’. The Paris ‘Blob’ is pro-Brussels, pro-immigration and viscerally opposed to ‘populism’, or what was once called the working-class vote.
Included in the National Rally manifesto are pledges to tighten border control and deport foreign criminals. There will also be an end to the ‘droit du sol’, whereby children born in France to foreign parents automatically become citizens, and the introduction of ‘National Priority’ in social welfare so that only French citizens benefit.
Three-quarters of the French believe there are too many immigrants in the country, a view that even has majority support among voters who identity as Socialists and Greens.
But according to an article in Monday’s Le Monde, the Constitutional Council would likely reject any attempt by a National Rally government to make life harder for illegal immigrants.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Last December an immigration Bill introduced by Macron was considerably tightened in the Senate by the centre-right Republicans, with the support of Marine Le Pen’s party. It was subsequently ‘un-tightened’ by the Constitutional Council with the encouragement of Macron.
According to a senior magistrate, Pierre Bouchardon, the ‘State Apparatus’ is composed almost entirely of progressive social democrats, appointed either by the Socialist president Francois Hollande, or his successor, Macron (who served in Hollande’s government). ‘There is no longer any diversity in the senior civil service, which is a serious problem,’ says Bouchardon.
He gave the example of the recent European Elections in which the powerful Council of State voted overwhelmingly either for Macron’s party or the Socialists, whereas the electorate gave the National Rally a landslide victory. ‘What better illustration of the disconnect between the elites and the people.’
There was another illustration last December when the Council of State ordered the government to bring back at their expense a Uzbekistan national who had been deported. Even though the French intelligence services considered the man a ‘dangerous radical Islamist’ (which he denied), the Council sided with the European Court of Human Rights who said his rights had been violated.
The 11-strong Constitutional Council, which scrutinises the constitutionality of laws, differs little from the Council of State in its ideology. Its president is Laurent Fabius, who served the Socialist governments of both Francois Mitterrand and Hollande.
In April this year Fabius said that ‘National Priority’ and a referendum on immigration contravened the French Constitution. He claimed that referendums are permitted only on economic and social issues. This ignored the obvious point that mass immigration has had a huge impact in both these areas; earlier this year the government’s Audit Office reported illegal immigration cost France almost €2 billion each year.
The great statesman Robert Badinter, who served as Mitterrand’s Minister of Justice, expressed his misgivings later in life at the way in which an elite cabal had become more powerful than parliament and the senate. He called it a ‘legal coup d’etat’.
Some wise heads among the French elite have warned that it would be foolish to stand in the way of what the people want. In a recent interview Daniel Keller, a former senior civil servant, described the ‘tension between the elites and the people which feeds a feeling of mistrust’.
Asked how the elite should respond if Bardella becomes Prime Minister, Keller said: ‘We are Republicans first and foremost… everyone will have to pull together to enable France to recover and the country to do better.’
Is this possible? The French elite aren’t known for their humility, just as the people aren’t known for their passivity. That is why so many in France are worried as to what the coming months may bring.
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