Macron’s demonstration of military statehood was damp pepper on the ballot box. Particularly irritating to him was the pure indifference of voters, a record share of whom (53 percent) abstained. The president’s maniacal hyperactivity was met by a classic Gallic shrug.
So, after taking a destructive ball at traditional parties, Macron came across a stationary object: apathy. The movement he created six years ago, La République en marche (“Republic in Motion”), has been halted. He renamed it the Renaissance, but so far there has been no rebirth or even reboot.
Although it was revolutionary France that invented the politics of the left and the right, Macron is difficult to understand, but then he was hardly a typical French politician. By nature, more inclined to grandiose gestures than to ideological consistency, he often fails to listen to the man – and especially the woman – on the street.
He regained some of the dignity of the presidency, a service that was ridiculed by the mercenary Nicolas Sarkozy and the libidinal Francois Hollande. His eye served him well as a symbol, for example with his eloquent message to the queen of her platinum anniversary.
However, the symbolism is no longer enough for Macron. Marian, the personification of France since 1789, abandoned his once godlike lover.
“Chicken in his pot”
After five years in power, the president has forgotten that elections are ultimately solved by bread and butter problems. After years of blockade and pandemic, he promised radical and branch-based economic reform, but nothing for families already making drastic economies.
Macron tends to forget the deepest truth ever told in French politics more than four centuries ago. Henry IV, who was pragmatic enough to change his religion to become king, declared: “I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he cannot have a chicken in his pot (” sa poule au pot “) Every Sunday.”
Like Britain, France is in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis for which the only real solution is a financial contraction that is deeply unpopular. The difference is that in France, both inflationary illnesses and recessionary medicine can be blamed in part on the European Central Bank – which, unlike the Bank of England, is unaccountable.
Another difference is that while the British had Mrs. Thatcher, the French never radically reformed their public sector. They are therefore even more bloated and bureaucratic than the British: government spending accounts for more than 60 percent of GDP, compared to about 50 percent in the United Kingdom.
Prior to Brexit, it was easy for French financial services and entrepreneurs to migrate to London’s more favorable fiscal and regulatory regime. This brain drain infuriated Macron, and he became a symbol of faith in making France more competitive – with only limited success.
After losing years when the pandemic cut short his reforms, Macron hoped to use his second term to push through a liberalization program that would rebalance the economy, removing the burden on business and encouraging workers to retire later.
Macron’s hopes are now in ruins. “His reform agenda will be far less ambitious than expected,” said Armin Steinbach, a Paris-based economist who predicts that only proposals with high costs for renewable energy or to deal with the effects of inflation will receive cross-party support.
The collapse is likely to come with the state pension reform, an issue that has already taken millions to the streets of the May Day demonstrations. Macron wants to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65 – still lower than in the UK, where he is now 66, rising to 67 in three years.
While the British widely agree that improved health and longevity mean that people can and often want to have longer working lives, the French refuse to accept this demographic imperative. Left and right-wing populists are exploiting the population in negativity, pretending that the economy can sustain an ever-increasing number of retirees. In particular, Melenchon is campaigning to reduce the retirement age from 62 to 60.
Such fantastic policies are inspired by the economic theories of Thomas Pickett and other neo-Marxists or new Keynesians, who suggest that money can be created, the loan is unlimited, and there are no downsides to taxation.
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