Emmanuel Macron is facing a huge problem. The more voters see him, the less they like him.
Macron’s performance since winning his place to second round of the French Presidential election has been catastrophic. Soon after winning 24% of the popular votes, Macron went to the very posh La Rotonde, a well-known restaurant in Paris, with his close friends and allies. Among them, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, soixante-huitard turned pillar of the Paris bien-pensant French liberals, and the pro-EU Jacques Attali, who believes that as long as him and his friends are living “la belle vie” nothing wrong can happen. It looked like Nicolas Sarkozy’s post-election party, which was savagely criticised by the French media after he won the presidency.
This political mistake demonstrates the true nature of Macron. A candidate of the establishment, a political fraud who seems completely out of his depth in a battle to save France from fascism. Macron’s movement “En Marche” is nothing more than a “gigantic Facebook group” with no real membership and his own electors don’t even trust him as 45% of them only voted for him to stop Le Pen. His manifesto is also confusing.
Macron wants to give a massive tax-break to pretty much everyone, whilst investing in the economy. Where the money will come from remains a mystery. During the campaign, Macron managed to claim that he was “a socialist” and then claimed the opposite, which gives the impression of a man that has nothing to offer other than he isn’t Le Pen.
France is experiencing one of its biggest political crisis in living memory and Macron is already exposed as the “political fraud” that he is. In a country where millions of people are unemployed and where poverty is rising, Macron appears to be the man who can’t rebuild the country’s confidence in a better future as 61% of his own voters don’t belive he will make a positive impact. On the other hand, the rise of the left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has demonstrated that France is fed up with its establishment and many French people want something else. They want a new France, a country that works for them not for the establishment.
Macron’s flashes of petulance and entitlement are unattractive for most of the seven million who voted for Mélenchon when he desperately need them to comfortably defeat the far-right. Even worse for him, he seems unable to win over the other seven million who voted for the conservative candidate Francois Fillon. Around a third of the seven million who voted for the right-wing and conservative candidate would prefer Le Pen over Macron as president.
For them, Macron is still a representative of the failed and hugely unpopular Francois Hollande’s government. Macron is too liberal for them. They wanted a candidate that will undo gay marriage and put Catholic traditional family values back in the political agenda. Macron doesn’t represent them, hence the temptation to vote for Le Pen.
Elections are always won not in the centre, but on the political credibility of the candidate’s manifesto. Therefore, what voters want to know is if their president will be able to solve France’s economic problems. Youth unemployment is a particular problem. Almost one in four of those aged under 25 are out of work, a much higher rate than in Germany. More than 85% of employment growth last year was for temporary jobs, and the vast majority of those hired were on contracts of less than a month. So here is the problem for Macron: he can’t appeal to both the left-wing and right-wing voters at the same time; he needs to find a common ground between all of them which will be impossible as the gulf that separates them is by far too high.
Macron behaves like he has already won the election, and ignores the polls that show him losing support for Le Pen. His “movement” thinks that he is in the same spot than Jacques Chirac was in 2002. The fear of the far-right will be enough for Macron to win comfortably. But the comparisons with 2002, when the FN founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, knocked out the Socialist Party candidate, Lionel Jospin, in the first round of the presidential election, are misleading. The 2002 result was a shock to France and the FN themselves. They had no credible programme and no real ambition to win the election. Thus, France voted massively for the conservative Chirac.
Today, no one doubts Marine Le Pen wants to win and is more “experienced” than Macron in fighting elections. Latest polls suggest that Macron should win with [around 60%] of the votes. But the support for the FN will grow under Macron’s presidency as he will not address the social issues that feed fascism in France. Macron seems to be at best a temporary, very temporary alas, rampart against the Front National. Whatever happens on Sunday 7 May, the crisis in France is so bad, so deep and the need for change so great that the country is at boiling point. Macron’s term as President will only help the crisis to grow.