TRIP HOME BRINGS MACRON BACK TO EARTH AFTER TRUMP LOVE-IN
Flying back to Paris and amid gushing television coverage of his visit to the US, France’s President Emmanuel Macron may have hoped that his three days in the Washington limelight would offer a distraction from troubles at home.
Strikes by workers on the national rail network and at Air France, blockades by students and rumblings of discontent in other sectors all reflect a France riven by deep divisions.
Some in France endorse the Macron philosophy that there is a pressing need to force through reforms that past governments have failed to introduce. For others, he is just another champion of capitalism.
Unions in particular long to revive the spirit of half a century ago, when the Paris Spring of 1968 brought the country to a near-standstill.
Opinions polls are inconclusive but suggest Mr Macron has recovered somewhat from a slump in popularity suffered in the months after his emphatic victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen in last May’s presidential elections.
But his presidency still has only minority approval – 44 per cent according to one recent survey. Paradoxically, more than 60 per cent of those questioned in the same poll still considered him right to confront railway workers widely regarded as strikehappy and privileged.
Reactions to his Washington visit, though, suggest that it is in international diplomacy where Mr Macron is making
a mark. In recent times, particularly since France under Jacques Chirac opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, American attitudes towards France can be neatly encapsulated in the image of the “cheese-eating surrender monkey” used in an episode of The Simpsons.
Mr Macron’s performance in the US capital won widespread, if not universal acclaim, reinforcing a growing feeling that while he may not yet be “leader of the free world”, he is already a greater statesman than his predecessors Mr Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande.
His speech to Congress – delivered in near-perfect English, a rarity for French heads of state – received a standing ovation from Democrats.
But Republicans were less enthusiastic, fully aware that key parts of his speech took indirect aim at their president’s policies, even if Mr Macron avoided singling out Donald Trump by name. One report talked of groans and rolling eyes as the French president talked up the merits of the Paris Accord on climate change, from which Mr Trump is withdrawing.
Yet the plaudits came from afar. US and British Twitter users posted messages expressing envy of France and its new figurehead.
Former England footballer and television presenter Gary Lineker tweeted that Mr Macron was “charismatic and smart”, asking: “Can we borrow him?”
It probably did no harm to the French president that he left Washington without having persuaded Mr Trump on the merits of sticking with the Iranian nuclear deal any more than they agreed on global trade or climate change. Beyond the far right, there is little obvious affection in Europe for Mr Trump.
But even overlooking the intensity of their muchstudied handshakes, the two presidents have apparently established a high degree of personal rapport.
The Washington Post talked of “the true beginning of an unlikely friendship, or bromance”, even though much of Mr Macron’s speech to Congress might have been made by the former US president, Barack Obama, whose policies Mr Trump condemns.
The same newspaper noted that despite the cooler reception from Mr Trump’s fellow Republicans to Mr Macron’s comments on environmental and economic issues, they and the Democrats “beamed, hooted and leapt to their feet more than two dozen times” as he praised US-French ties and the Trump government’s attempts to denuclearise North Korea.
Mr Macron still faces plenty of criticism. The French left berates him for attacking public services and slavishly pursuing a pro-business agenda. In a display of indignation, some on social media questioned his use of English for some tweets.
He will face relatively little domestic hostility for having stood up to “isolationism, withdrawal and nationalism”, his words in Washington, and unambiguous criticism of Mr Trump’s policies.
But political opponents detected an obsequious element to his approach.
The Elysee Palace complained about “vulgar humour with a touch of homophobia” after Mr Hollande, his socialist predecessor and former mentor, said he was a president for the very rich and the “passive” half of the Macron-Trump “couple”.
Even so, Mr Macron left the US feeling “extremely pleased” with his visit. On disagreeing with Mr Trump, he said: “I think it’s life. It’s the same thing in all families.”
The socialism he theoretically espoused when serving in Mr Hollande’s government, and before launching his La Republique En Marche, is long gone.
It is clear he has his work cut out in seeking to persuade dissenters – the rail and airline workers and students appalled by the prospect of reform – that they are family, too.
While France’s president was ‘extremely pleased’ by his US excursion, he is not immune to the forces that oppose him at home