Macron is a member of the elite
IT IS customary in every country for a newly elected head of government or state to enjoy an inaugural honeymoon with the local media. Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, is having his now. But will it last – and for how long? I fear not long at all. The French electorate, with an appalling choice last Sunday, has been duping itself.
Millions of French voters allowed themselves to be persuaded this young man was going to break the mould, to carry out huge and desired changes. The disenchantment with the establishment that brought Donald Trump to the White House and Theresa May to Downing Street exists in France too.
There is a desire for change at very many levels, especially among the young. But if that is what they want they have the wrong man. Just consider the background of this self-styled reformer.
As a child he was mummy’s pet. Not a grazed knee or scuffed toecap in sight. At school he was teacher’s darling – literally. Always top of his class he fell in love at 16 with his teacher of 41, married with three children. They are still together, she 25 years his senior and still the mummy figure.
Then university, then the National School of Administration, that hothouse for the future elite in politics, civil service and finance. Always top of the class he rose through the ranks, not as an innovative thinker and heaven forbid a rebel. His rise derived from years of courtship of the establishment and its pillars until a ministership under president Hollande, a sort of father figure.
He broke with the socialists only because further elevation was not on the cards and Hollande’s rule was coming to an end.
What followed was a masterpiece of self-reinvention and clever PR. With no party backing he founded his own, the only audacious thing he has ever done. But it has worked, in a political field of minuscule talent. His carefully promoted image as a changer of things, a breaker of moulds, is up there with the tooth fairy. He is an establishment creature to his boot heels.
My prediction? He will remain passionate for the established order of things, slavish to the EU and its authority and subordinate to Germany, also ruled by a stern matriarch figure.
Well, D’Artagnan he certainly ain’t. By the end of the year that part of the electorate which lusts for change will realise it has been duped and start rioting.
As for Brexit, well by then negotiations should be well under way and Mrs Merkel back in the Berlin chancellery. But it looks as if we shall have no friends at the table.
So the “hard Brexit” that the Remoaners fear will be foisted upon us whether we like it or not, unless we are prepared to crawl. And that, I hope, is simply not on the menu. So, once again, we may stand alone.
Well, we have done that before.