Marine le pen

Sunday

Jonathan Fenby

Emmanuel Macron is marching towards disaster

Coming out of a celebratory dinner at a Montparnasse brasserie after topping the poll in the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron had a brief brush with the press. A reporter asked: ‘Is this your Fouquet moment? This referred to a notoriously showy celebration by Nicolas Sarkozy at Fouquet’s restaurant after his own victory in 2007. The 39-year-old centrist was visibly cross. He simply wanted to thank his secretaries, security officers, politicians and writers, he said. Then came the dig. ‘If you don’t understand that,’ he said, ‘you understand nothing about life. I have no lessons to learn from the petit milieu Parisien.’ This dismissive

Saturday

Charles Moore

Would Le Pen or Macron be better for Brexit?

With Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen through to the final in France, people of a conservative disposition might feel themselves spoilt for choice. You can have either the believer in free markets and open societies or the upholder of sovereignty and national identity. In both cases, the left doesn’t get a look-in. But what if it isn’t like that at all? What if Macron, far from opposing the big state, is just a more technocratic version of the usual dirigiste from ENA? What if Le Pen, far from wanting a nation’s genius expressed in its vigorous parliamentary democracy, is just a spokesman for joyless resentment, looking for handouts for

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 27 April 2017

With Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen through to the final in France, people of a conservative disposition might feel themselves spoilt for choice. You can have either the believer in free markets and open societies or the upholder of sovereignty and national identity. In both cases, the left doesn’t get a look-in. But what if it isn’t like that at all? What if Macron, far from opposing the big state, is just a more technocratic version of the usual dirigiste from ENA? What if Le Pen, far from wanting a nation’s genius expressed in its vigorous parliamentary democracy, is just a spokesman for joyless resentment, looking for handouts for angry

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Europe’s new emperor

On this week’s episode of The Spectator Podcast, we discuss whether France is voting for the lesser of two evils in Emmanuel Macron, consider whether Tim Farron made a mistake by bringing God into politics, and look at how the spread of Mayism across Britain could alter the Conservative party. First, following Emmanuel Macron’s stunning victory in the first round of the French elections – taking a seemingly unassailable popularity into the run-off with Marine Le Pen – Jonathan Fenby considers, in this week’s magazine cover story, whether Macron is in fact headed for disaster. He joins the podcast along with Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, to discuss whether the 39-year-old sensation is all he seems.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron is wrong to think his election victory is a foregone conclusion

France is in a flap and Emmanuel Macron is to blame. On Sunday evening the En Marche! leader looked for all the world like a man who believed he’d already been crowned king. Bounding onto stage with a wink, a wave and a smile to his adoring supporters, after his first round victory, he then partied the night away at a Parisian bistro surrounded by the great and the good of France’s liberal elite. Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, after a brief speech to her supporters in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, left to start plotting her second round campaign. On Monday evening she appeared on the main news programme to announce

Jonathan Fenby

What’s the matter with Macron?

Coming out of a celebratory dinner at a Montparnasse brasserie after topping the poll in the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron had a brief brush with the press. A reporter asked: ‘Is this your Fouquet moment? This referred to a notoriously showy celebration by Nicolas Sarkozy at Fouquet’s restaurant after his own victory in 2007. The 39-year-old centrist was visibly cross. He simply wanted to thank his secretaries, security officers, politicians and writers, he said. Then came the dig. ‘If you don’t understand that,’ he said, ‘you understand nothing about life. I have no lessons to learn from the petit milieu Parisien.’ This dismissive

Tuesday

Robert Tombs

France wants a new saviour. Will it be Macron or Le Pen?

After having given themselves and the rest of us a fright, France’s voters have, by a worryingly small margin, stepped back from the brink. Some polls indicated a possible victory for the two extremists, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, either of whom would have meant disaster for France. Instead, the next President will almost certainly be the youthful centrist, Emmanuel Macron, the nearest to a viable establishment candidate. Though this is certainly a far lesser evil, it is evident that the political system of Europe’s oldest large democracy has gone spectacularly wrong. The minimum requirement of a functioning democracy is that a manageable range of sensible choices is put

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Macron’s marriage shows how different Britain and France really are

If Emmanuel Macron were British, would he be a Tory, Lib Dem or a Blairite? Or would he be blubbing into a handkerchief in a TV studio calling himself a ‘survivor’ of seduction by his teacher while his wife was banned from the teaching profession, if not put through the mill by investigators from Operation Yewtree? If anyone doubts the gulf in societal attitudes between Britain and France, the relationship between Macron and his wife Brigitte Trogneux provides a rather good illustration. While there is no suggestion they had sex while he was a minor, enough is known about the couple to know how the nature of their meeting would

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Jean-Claude Juncker’s joy at Macron’s win shows the EU’s big problem

Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the first round of the French presidential election is the good news the EU was waiting for. After Brexit and Trump, Brussels is delighted – so much so in fact that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ditched the convention of staying out of ongoing elections by calling Macron a ‘pretty obvious choice’. But perhaps Juncker and his allies in Brussels would do well to take the hint from the millions of voters who backed anti-EU parties at the ballot box. Even from Dover, ‘you could almost hear the popping of champagne corks’ after Emmanuel Macron triumphed, says the Daily Mail. ‘In Brussels…the elation was unbounded,’ the paper says.

Monday

Aline-Florence Manent

Is Emmanuel Macron doomed to be a lame duck President from the start?

Emmanuel Macron is on the verge of becoming the youngest president in French history. If he is successful in defeating his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, it will also be the first time since 1974 that France elects a centrist president. But even in its early days, Macron’s presidency will face a huge test: his En Marche! movement is still very much in its infancy and it is unclear whether it will morph into a full-blown political party before June’s legislative elections. If it doesn’t, one of the main questions that voters will have is whether Macron will be able to govern in the absence of a clear parliamentary majority. Since the term of the presidency

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

By ditching the National Front, Le Pen is playing Macron at his own game

Everybody knows that Marine Le Pen can’t beat Emmanuel Macron, don’t they? What does she have to lose? Nothing, it seems. She has now declared that she will run as an independent candidate, and not stand for the National Front. Marine’s move is surprising and clever in a madcap way. Anything that Macron can do I can do stranger, she is saying. Macron has reinvented himself as an outsider taking on the establishment — even though everyone knows he is a former banker and Hollande economics adviser. Well, Marine is saying, I can pretend that I am an independent too. Macron’s greatest weakness is that he was tarred by association

Mathieu Vaillancourt

Meet France’s answer to Nigel Farage

The success of Emmanuel Macron’s ‘En Marche’, a party which is barely a year old, has taken some by surprise. But Macron wasn’t the only alternative party candidate to do well in the first round of voting in the French Presidential elections. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, or NDA as the French call him, is the leader of Debout La France – probably the closest thing in French politics to Ukip. The mayor of Yeres, a commune which sits in the suburbs of Paris, is firmly eurosceptic and anti-euro. For some, he is France’s answer to Nigel Farage. And yesterday, he picked up 4.7 per cent of the vote – compared to 1.8 per cent in 2012. His

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

An unlikely alliance of Communists and Catholics could yet spoil Macron’s coronation

After their humiliation with Brexit and Donald Trump, the pollsters returned to form in France with their predictions of a Macron and Le Pen first round victory. If the polls are as accurate with their forecast for the second round, then the new president of France will be the centrist Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old is the overwhelming favourite. But nonetheless, there are reasons for the National Front to hope that they could still replicate the political earthquakes of 2016. For that to happen Marine Le Pen will have to attack Macron on two fronts with the purpose of attracting votes from both the far-left and the conservative right. Between them,

Sunday

Freddy Gray

Macron and Le Pen win first round of the French presidential election, exit polls forecast

It’s still rather a cheerful vibe at the French ambassador’s residence in sunny Kensington this evening. The crowd here would have preferred the exit poll to show Macron and Fillon to go through, but they’ll take Macron versus Le Pen, especially with Macron in the lead. There were sharp intakes of breath when Le Pen popped up on screen in second place. But Macron being ahead is good news as far as these Londoners are concerned. A huge number of French voters abroad turned out today – a good chunk of them in London, where people queued up outside the French Lycée in Kensington for up to three hours to cast

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Who will win the French election – and does it even matter?

Who will win the French presidential election? Does it even matter? Nothing in the programmes or personalities of the leading contenders gives confidence that any of them can fix the Fifth Republic and the corruption, dysfunction and stagnation that it has inflicted on the French. At Marie-Trinité’s café in the southern French village where I am an elected councillor, the mood before the voting is one of weary resignation and disgust. Yet this election does matter, and it can make a difference, not only because all of the probable outcomes threaten to make things even worse, but because almost all of them have the potential to be particularly painful for

Saturday

Jonathan Miller

France’s deplorable election has unified voters in disgust

I popped into the village pharmacy this morning with a prescription for valium. Not for me, I hasten to add, but for my epileptic dog. But I am sorely tempted to divert one or two doses for my personal use, as I prepare to help count the votes on Sunday night in the first round of the French presidential election. I do not think it is exaggerating to wonder if, on the eve of voting, the fifth republic is going to collapse with a bang or a whimper. It may not even be necessary to wait for the second round of voting in a fortnight. There is a scenario in

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France braces itself for the backlash if Marine Le Pen triumphs

With less than twenty four hours before polling booths open in France, the country’s security forces are on full alert for another attack by Islamist extremists. More than 50,000 police and 7,000 soldiers have been mobilised as part of the massive security operation but they still lack the resources to safeguard every polling station. In Paris, for example, only 400 of the 896 polling booths will have security personnel on duty. But it’s not just Islamists who are menacing France. The far left has called for a ‘Night of Barricades’ [a reference to the May demonstrations of 1968] to begin on Sunday at 6pm, to oppose what they describe as

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the dark horse in the French election

The lovely Dordogne village of St Pompon that is my holiday hide-away has only 350 voters, but is a perfect predictor of presidential elections. It voted heavily for Jacques Chirac against Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002, marginally for Nicolas Sarkozy against Ségolène Royale in 2007, and 59-41 for François Hollande against Sarkozy in 2012. So I’d love to tell you who’s going to win this time on the strength of the chatter at the Good Friday market. But the only national event the locals seemed interested in was a mountain bike championship just up the road. In gentle spring sunshine, the presidential contest seemed so far away that no one

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to talk about Islamic extremism could cost him dearly

Last night, an Islamic terrorist opened fire with an assault rifle on a police van on the Champs Élysées in Paris, killing one policeman and wounding two others before he was shot dead. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack and according to the French newspaper, Le Parisien, the gunman was a 39-year-old called Karim C, also known as Abu-Yusuf al-Baljiki, who in 2003 had been sentenced to twenty years in prison for the attempted murder of three men, two of whom were policemen. At the same time as the police came under fire, Marine Le Pen was being interviewed on French television. Initially there were plans to hold another

Thursday

Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Election special

On this week’s episode, we discuss the two European nations that are are heading for the polls in the next couple of months. First, we look at Theresa May’s shock decision to hold a snap election, and then we cross the channel to consider the French election as they get set to whittle the field down to just two. With British news set to be dominated until June 8th by election fever (yet again), there was no place to start this week but with the fallout from the Prime Minister’s stunning U-turn on an early election. It’s a gamble, James Forsyth says in his cover piece this week, but with a portentially enormous pay