Bond meets Bonaparte in dashing Macron
FRANCE: As France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, Emmanuel Macron has captivated the public with his dash and poise in the outsize role granted to the French head of state. But last week it became clear to all that, in true Bonaparte style, the 39-year-old has not merely taken power but seized it.
Some are dazzled, but others are less impressed - and their rising scorn for his imperial airs has been leapt on with glee by French satirists and the Left.
Last week, Macron summoned both houses of parliament to the royal palace at Versailles to hear him outline his sweeping vision of reform for France.
‘‘If the republic of inefficiency must end, so must the republic of short-termism, petty deals and routine,’’ he declared grandly.
With that he was whisked away by helicopter to a nuclear submarine, Le Terrible, off the Breton coast, leaving his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, to explain that promised tax cuts would be delayed and parliament itself would be culled by a third of its 577 members.
It did not go down well with the acerbic far-left leader Jean-luc Melenchon, who dismissed Macron’s speech as ‘‘an interminable rain of truisms . . . overblown Bonapartism, bleating Europeism, deadly boredom’’.
Some see Macron’s publicity stunts as teetering on the brink of satire. After he was winched down to the submarine he was compared on Twitter to a comic-book hero and James Bond.
Embedded in the Elysee Palace with a coterie of aides, Macron has blanked out the French media and cancelled the annual presidential press conference.
An aide explained that his thoughts were too sublime to be comprehended by journalists, prompting the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine to print a spoof interview with Macron.
Questioner: ‘‘So, it’s all over for interviews and press conferences?’’
Macron: ‘‘Affirmative. They will be replaced by the publication every month of a scan of my brain, so that the public may marvel at the complexity of my reasoning.’’
To critics, his lofty attitude recalls a remark made by Napoleon himself to his cabinet in 1804: ‘‘We are here to guide public opinion, not to discuss it.’’
All the same, the French like grandeur in their head of state, and so far Macron’s pitch-perfect debut on the world stage has enhanced his prestige. Opinion polls suggest the public takes pride in France’s new standing.
Last week he was at the G20 summit in Germany, and this week he will stand beside Donald Trump at the military parade for Bastille Day at the Arc de Triomphe.
At home Macron has shrewdly delegated tough news on the economic front to his prime minister, a conservative, and handed hard decisions on security and migration to his interior minister, Gerard Collomb, a veteran Socialist. It was Collomb who ruled out building a new refuge at Calais, saying it would merely attract more migrants, and ordered the evacuation of an encampment of more than 2700 rough sleepers in Paris that had infuriated local residents for months.
Commentators ask how long it will take to rub the sheen off this presidency. Macron is rushing through unpopular labour reforms by decree over the summer but will face a hot autumn when they start to take effect. - Sunday Times