Now that Emmanuel Macron has been elected President of France, it would
be tempting to write only that the easy part is over and that the hard part is about
to start. Tempting, but incomplete. Although the task of governing
France is as daunting as it gets, Macron’s remarkable achievement in winning
this election at the age of 39 should not be underestimated, not only for what
it says about him as a person but also for the way he is likely to approach the presidency.
After all, wouldn’t it have been easier for this highly ambitious young man
to do what many other young and ambitious French politicians have done in the
past? Learn the ropes among the ruling classes by graduating from ENA and become
senior advisor or chief of staff to a minister, the Prime Minister or the President.
Be appointed a minister or Prime Minister oneself. Become the mayor of a large
city or lay down roots in a parliamentary constituency and be elected as its MP.
Conquer the leadership of a well-established political party. Or even all three
at the same time. Observe closely, from such vantage points, the country’s political
scene, build up a network of useful and preferably rich and powerful contacts while
keeping a safe job within the civil service in case of a political setback. And
then, when the time is judged ripe, stand for the presidency once, or twice, before
winning the treasured prize. That is, more or less, the route that the last three Presidents of the Fifth Republic have followed.
Macron clearly does not fit this description. Although he has graduated
from ENA, he was only briefly an advisor and then minister to François Hollande.
He has never, before last night, been elected to political office. He created
his own party only a year ago and has resigned from his safe position in the civil
service. The scenography of his first appearance as President last night and
the two fairly sober and low-key speeches he delivered, the absence of any histrionics,
seem to indicate that he sees the presidency not as the crowning glory of a long
political career but as his destiny.
The last President to have broken the default mould of French politics in
a similar way was Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1974. He too graduated from ENA
and created his own party but, unlike Macron, he had previously pursued a high-profile
ministerial career, which would undoubtedly have been longer if the untimely death of President
Pompidou in April 1974 had not led to an election in May. Giscard, now 91
and still going strong, comes from an aristocratic and wealthy family and
definitely lacks the common touch, however desperately he has always tried to
conceal it. Right from the grandiloquent “a new era dawns today” in his
inaugural speech, Giscard let himself too easily be characterised as an upper class
toff. In spite of his forward-looking
policies on European integration and bold social reforms like the legalisation
of abortion, he was felled in the 1981 presidential elections by a relatively minor
corruption affair to which he reacted badly and with characteristic contempt
and pomposity, before meeting - and
losing - his match with François Mitterand. Le
Monde formulated the following damning judgement when he left power: Giscard,
it wrote, was a man of “false modesty and real pretentiousness”.
Macron is a very different person and will probably be a very different leader.
And it is surely too easy, as many of his opponents have tried to do, to
ascribe the Macron phenomenon solely to the support of a coterie of influential
sponsors who hold the levers of finance and the media. Macron certainly has
some powerful allies, but he is definitely not a puppet in their hands, as François
Hollande, for one, has found to his cost. He has bold and innovative ideas and
has shown, during this campaign, that he will not shirk from defending them with
conviction, even in the face of a hostile crowd. He has clearly been able to inspire
and lead from the front. He has shown that he learns fast, that he can use the
support he has been given to good effect, and that he has the vision and the energy
to create the conditions for success.
All that is well and good, but as I have written before, people and
institutions that have no interest in change will undoubtedly put up great resistance.
We shall have few indications about how Macron intends to go about putting his
bold ideas into practice until he takes over officially from François Hollande
next Sunday and appoints his first, probably interim, Prime Minister. The parliamentary
elections in June will be a whole new ball game. The confused and contradictory
debate on TV last night between the main protagonists of these elections shows
that nobody has much of a clue as to what majority will emerge nor whether it will
be favourable to the President or not.
I have often thought in the past that France needed a Margaret Thatcher
to shake it up and put it back on track. I’m not at all sure today. France is
not the United Kingdom and sets much more store by its model of a cohesive
society. It will give short shrift to a leader who only supports its most dynamic
elements but leaves its more vulnerable members behind. The eleven million
votes for Le Pen in yesterday’s run-off, not to speak of the long standing revolutionary
tradition in French politics, that was strongly and successfully embodied by
Mélenchon in this election, are ample proof. Macron’s record so far and his first
speeches as President indicate that he is fully aware of this reality. Thatcher
was a great leader but she was also a divisive one and it can be argued that
the U.K is still suffering today from the negative effects of her stewardship. Macron may
have taken a leaf out of her book in his single-minded determination to win
power. Now he must turn that single-minded determination not only to breaking
the mould of French politics but also to changing the mindset and the culture of
much of French society while restoring its cohesion and upholding the values it
professes to live by.
I fear Macron will come to resemble Thatcher not only in his determination but in his policies as well. History will tel..
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