“Macron, resign! These two words rang out Thursday in Ganges as the French president visited the Louise-Michel college, where he announced a salary increase for teachers from 100 to 230 euros (150 to 345 dollars) per month. The day before, we also heard them in Muttersholtz, in Alsace, at the entrance to the Mathis factory, where the head of state had come to talk to workers. On April 12, the protesters even went to The Hague, where Macron was on an official visit. After three months of chaos and even if the law on pensions has been adopted, validated and promulgated, nothing seems to be settled. Not an exit of the president without his procession of pans.
We will have to get used to it, they say behind the scenes at the Élysée: according to polls, 63% of French people want social mobilization to continue. Because, two days before the first anniversary of his re-election, the president does not intend to remain locked up. This is what is called in political circles “reinvesting in the field”. A type of operation that Emmanuel Macron has mastered, who never lacks repartee. These high-risk moves were not lacking in its predecessors either. From Chirac to Sarkozy, from Jospin to Hollande, all have had to face this type of return to the field after a reform that is difficult to swallow.
With only 28% of favorable opinions, Emmanuel Macron reaches levels of unpopularity that Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy have already known. But we see that he is falling in all social categories, including in the hard core of his electorate, which is largely made up of executives and professionals. Only François Hollande had done worse. But, the particularity of Emmanuel Macron is significant: it is exceptional that this happens at the very beginning of his mandate. However, Emmanuel Macron has only been re-elected for a year.
One hundred days to bounce back
In this context, how to relaunch a quinquennium which has only just begun? This is the agonizing question that all strategists have been asking themselves for two weeks. After considering changing Prime Minister and reorganizing his Council of Ministers, the President has given himself 100 days to try to renew contact with the French and calm their anger. Anger largely triggered by the way the president passed by force, without having the text of the reform voted on directly, and using all the exceptional procedures offered by the Constitution.
It must be said that, in the current context, the effect of a change of prime minister would have been negligible. “For someone to serve as a fuse, it is still necessary that he has been exposed”, writes the deputy editorial director of The Express, Laureline Dupont. However, Elisabeth Borne mainly served as an executant. On March 22, the president entrusted him with the mission of widening the presidential majority in the National Assembly. The equation being insoluble, his resignation would even have been deemed unfair.
But that’s only a postponement. For most observers, it would be surprising if the Prime Minister survived these hundred days, for which the president coldly asked her to “fix the roadmap”. So here is Emmanuel Macron reduced to taking his pilgrim’s staff to crisscross France. This is what he did at the beginning of 2019 by launching a “great national debate” following the Yellow Vests crisis. An operation which only gave disparate measures (ecology, tax exemptions, disappearance of the ENA) which one still wonders what links they could have with a popular revolt triggered by the increase in taxes on gasoline.
Black sequence
This time, “Macron’s bag of tricks will no longer be of any help to him”, launches Franz-Olivier Gisbert in Point. Especially since the president can hardly afford to spend another 17 billion euros as he had done to calm the revolt of the yellow vests. The catastrophic situation of public finances puts into perspective the president’s calls to launch a major labor negotiation. Calls shunned for the moment by all the union leaders, starting with the most respected of them, the boss of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, who, thanks to his firmness and his moderation, is the only one to come out of this conflict with honours.
The mistrust seems here to stay. This is the observation that we make both on the right and on the left. “How to believe that the only election makes it possible to govern durably and serenely against two thirds of the population? » request in Le Figaro Vincent Tremolet de Villers. On the left, in one of his very rare outings, former socialist minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn accuses Emmanuel Macron of having “abused the French people” and “made any major legislation difficult until the end of the five-year term”.
According to Ludovic Vigogne, “just started, it’s as if this mandate was already over”. The colleague of Opinion publishes these days a book which sheds a harsh light on the beginning of this second five-year term (The dayless. Macron: the secrets of a bad patch, Books). He tells how this failure to convince the French of the pension reform is only the latest in a term that began with a series of mess. From the non-campaign of the legislative elections to Emmanuel Macron’s inability to integrate the majority parties (Renaissance, MoDem and Horizons) into a single structure, via the rejection of his candidate (Roland Lescure) in the presidency of the National Assembly, the president has gone from failure to failure for a year. A black series crowned by his inability to impose on his own party the one he had chosen as prime minister: the president of Reims metropolis Catherine Vautrin. A rebuff that forced Emmanuel Macron to trade this field Sarkozyist for a left-wing techno with 48 hours notice.
The fear of the “regular”
“Barely elected, the time of his omnipotence is already over”, concluded Vigogne. Four years from the next presidential elections, where he will not be able to stand again, here is the president reduced to having to save time. However, there is no shortage of subjects on which there is consensus in France. Polls have long indicated that an overwhelming majority of French people support strong action on immigration and security. This is what the Minister of the Interior, Gérard Darmanin, has understood, who already seems to be campaigning for the succession in 2027. But the president flees like the plague from all these sovereign subjects, Corinne told us last year Lhaïk, co-author of Night falls twice (Fayard). Arrived in power with the conviction that there is no political problem that has no economic solution, Emmanuel Macron seems more than ever at a crossroads: either he opens a new sequence, or he resolves himself, at four years of the next presidential election, to a form of “chiraquisation”, synonymous in France with political immobility.
Barely elected, the time of his omnipotence is already over.
In the meantime, the most cynical will not have failed to remind the President that the image of the “hundred days” does not only evoke the start of a new mandate, but above all these three months which elapsed between the flight of Napoleon of the island of Elba and… his defeat at Waterloo.