Macron is grudgingly extending his hand
The French president is finally seeing the light. It’s for ‘Boris in petticoats’ to seize the opportunity
Inasmuch as he paid any serious attention to the Tory leadership race – an exotically democratic and transparent process compared to how French presidential candidates are picked by their parties – Emmanuel Macron probably felt a bit closer to Rishi Sunak than to Liz Truss. Both speak the same language: they rose to the economy portfolio in the Cabinet, are young, sharply-dressed, clever (a touch of the class swot), technocratfriendly, at ease in international gatherings, and skew centrist.
By contrast, Liz Truss is bewildering. Never having had to campaign for anything apart from his one victorious shot at the presidency, Macron doesn’t understand grassroots or party politics. He disliked the entire business as he witnessed it practised by his former mentor, president François Hollande. He feels it’s messy, at times unpredictable, and requires making deals with secondary characters he’d rather just be ordering about. (Once a mandarin, always a mandarin.)
Even before Truss had answered Julia Hartley-brewer’s pop-quiz question on whether he was “friend or foe”, Macron had sniffed a bit of the populist when, as secretary of state for international trade, Truss predicted better global free-trade opportunities for Brexit Britain than within his beloved EU. Nor did Thatcherite references gel with him. Truss’s latest audiencepleasing quip, much-criticised in France, confirmed her as La Boris en jupons (“Boris in petticoats”).
And yet, now may be the exact time when Macron, he of the “clown” and “gougnafier” epithets directed at Bojo, will choose to act magnanimously. His first measured reaction (“The United Kingdom remains a friendly, strong and allied nation [to France], regardless of her leadership”) indicates he is aware of this, facing, as he does, a difficult autumn. Energy bills may not have risen as much in France as in the UK, but they are still stiff; so are the weekly shop, school costs, mortgage rates, and more. Just like the UK, France faces manpower shortages, waiting lists for doctors’ appointments, and falling house prices.
Le président now understands that the coming recession will be blamed on him by every would-be gilet jaune, not to mention a fractious parliament where he no longer holds a majority. Passing every bill requires an ad hoc alliance with the Right or the Left. Before the new National Assembly closed for recess at the beginning of this month, this meant forcing through a hurried package entailing a good deal of crablike seesawing. Temporary food and petrol subsidies for the poorest were voted in with the help of the Left; scrapping the TV licence with the Right. Ditto a 4 per cent basic pensions rise, as well as one-time payouts to businesses to incentivise employees. Both sides agreed to a €150 cheque to parents of school age children. As this litany only delays the pain, while adding to France’s debt, Macron faces a lively four and a half year coming term.
His answer is to dramatise the international situation. Goodbye to the times of the “multipolar world” and useless telephone diplomacy with Putin. Macron has been doing the mother of all reverse ferrets on the need for a strong Western alliance (he’s now for it), and is finally naming the enemy. France’s new objectives, at last clearly defined, are to take her place squarely with the democracies working to contain the rise of totalitarianism. This means not only Nato, but expanding such maritime alliances as the Biden-inspired Quad (the US, Japan, India and Australia) to the UK and France, a country with deployment capacities on five continents and that boasts the secondlargest exclusive economic area after the United States.
However cynical some of his motivations are, Macron’s intentions are finally good. His recent statements on Ukraine are straightforward: “...we must unfailingly support Ukraine over the long term”. He is not the first French head of state to fall resolutely on the right side after early provocative statements: so did Charles de Gaulle at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, and François Mitterrand during the Falklands War. Prime minister Liz Truss could do worse than close a Western fault line that only benefits Putin’s Russia, and accept Macron’s grudgingly-extended hand. As an added benefit, this should isolate Germany within the EU, and what could be more Thatcherite than that?