Emmanuel Macron has always been clear about his views on public opinion. “If you conduct politics to please the times you're in, you become a commentator on them. If you want to be in politics you have to accept doing what sometimes seems the opposite of pubic opinion,” he said. That is also the general response given by the government and the ruling La République en Marche (LREM) party when they are questioned about the discontent some of their reforms have caused.
At the start of the presidency the government is doing all it can to carry out its rapid “transformation” of the country by displaying a “drive” that nothing or no one seems able to hold in check. Certainly not those “lazy people”, to use the president's own words, who “think that one mustn't change in Europe or in France”.
In its bid to appear to be constantly on the go, the government is carrying out more and more reforms, even if this is at the risk of confusing speed with haste, and of lacking a coherent narrative. The impact of the measures brought in during the autumn of 2017, such as those to help with the cost of living, is taking time to be felt on in the ground. The result is that President Emmanuel Macron and the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, have seen their popularity fall in all the monthly polls, though they continue to claim officially that they care nothing about such tests of popularity. “I really don't care … I've never commented [on them]. I don't comment on the rises or the falls,” said President Macron during a visit to Châlons-en-Champagne in northern France on March 1st. “Polls leave no trace. There are people who have been obsessed all their lives by them, they leave no trace. What matters is the in-depth work you do for the country,” said the head of state.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The prime minister, too, has often said that he is not especially worried about his popularity. Speaking about the government's plans to reduce the speed limit to 80 kilometres an hour on secondary roads – a measure that some in the LREM itself do not approve of - Édouard Philippe established his approach early on: “If you have to be unpopular to save lives, I'll accept that,” he told the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche at the beginning of January. That is the clear political message the government is sending out publicly. In practice, however, public opinion is very useful to the executive. The government is able to play it off against those opposing reform, whether they be politicians or interest groups. That is why polls are often the backdrop to government arguments along the lines of “you want things to change while they prefer the status quo”.
Up to now the government has relied on the argument that its reforms should not be opposed on the grounds that they were announced before the presidential and Parliamentary elections in 2017 and thus enjoy a popular mandate. That was certainly the case with the move to reform employment law via decrees rather than primary legislation. The same is true of the institutional reforms that are now the subject of consultations by the prime minister's office. The flagship measures in these reforms – the reduction in the number of Parliamentarians, not allowing Parliamentarians to run for many terms of office and introducing a degree of proportionality into Parliamentary elections – were indeed announced by Emmanuel Macron during his campaign and restated in July 2017 at the special Congress held at Versailles.
One of the obstacles to these reforms is the president of France's second chamber, the Senate. Gérard Larcher, who is from the conservative Les Républicains, considers the measure on the number of terms a politician can serve to be a “gimmick”, for example. So the executive has already said if necessary it will not hesitate to bypass the Senate and hold a referendum on the issue. Though this is not yet the preferred option, officials in the Élysée have been very clear that if the president of the Senate drags his feet “then we'll have then to speak to the French people”. Moreover, as is well known, the second chamber has rarely had a good press. “The Senate is just a retirement home for privileged politicians,” wrote the former green MP Noël Mamère, in his 1999 book Ma République.
“Some elected members, for example in the Senate, behave like [members of] interest groups,” says a Macron ally. “They don't want political life to change.” Richard Ferrand, the president of the LREM group of MPs in the National Assembly, spoke along similar lines in the 'Questions d'Info' TV programme broadcast by LCP-Le Point-AFP at the end of January. “We've known since yesterday what the Senate president thinks: in broad terms 'we don't change anything, we'll carry on as before and we'll set a number of rules in stone for eternity'. That seems to me a tiny bit conservative, so we'll have to start discussions to arrive at a revision of the constitution.”
By deliberately highlighting the “privileges” and “conservatism” of others the executive is constantly portraying itself as the guarantor of change faced with the apparent immobilism of those who do not agree with it. To complete their argument they rely on polls that support their argument, while ignoring those that are unfavourable. The latest one, carried out by Odoxa-Dentsu Consulting for France info and Le Figaro, shows that “82% of French people consider a constitutional reform to be useful” and approve the majority of the measures opposed by Senate president Gérard Larcher. “We can see that the French people agree,” says the head of the LREM senators François Patriat. “The government has the support!”.
'Public opinion is sometimes more mature that the political classes'
While the headline-grabbing elements of the institutional reforms seem to attract a broad consensus, some other proposals put on the table by the government might alter the balance when it comes to public opinion. This is particularly true of the plan to limit the right of individual MPs to amend legislation even though, as the constitutional law professor Dominique Rousseau has told Mediapart, this is an “inherent” part of an MP's function.
Marc Fesneau, the president of the MPs from the LREM's allies MoDem in the National Assembly, says: “The French people might be sensitive about this.” He says that the “right of amendment is fundamental, constitutional and individual” and believes that this reform will be played out on the battleground of public opinion.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
This is the way that the government plans to defends the majority of those measures which were not heralded during the presidential campaign – Emmanuel Macron at the time refused to be drawn into details on a large number of issues. “The president of the Republic received a mandate to produce and get results,” explains one of his advisors. “Through him the French people have chosen action. Public opinion is sometimes more mature that the political classes in going along with changes.” It is a useful argument to cut short debate and impose one's decisions.
At the start of the year interior minister Gérard Collomb used this approach at every opportunity to defend his reforms of asylum and immigration legislation against unhappy Parliamentarians. “When I told him of the disagreements that I had with the initial version of the text, he spoke to me about public opinion,” says Sonia Krimi, herself an MP for Macron's ruling party, the LREM. “But in the end if you relied on public opinion you wouldn't have made progress on abortion or the death penalty!” But despite warnings from some MPs, the anger of heads of some groups in the voluntary sector and even criticism from a few people close to the president, the executive has not wavered on this issue, taking comfort from the sure knowledge of having public opinion on its side.
“The French public are extremely tough on migration issues,” an ally of the interior minister told Mediapart in mid-February. “A lot of people thought that several measures we're putting in place had already been carried out. We have been surprised by this turnaround in pragmatism.” A minister meanwhile told Mediapart: “Immigration is a dividing line in French society. There's always a gap between what people think generally and what they experience on the ground.”
It would appear from the words of one Macron advisor that this same reasoning is used by the government to explain public discontent with some policies. The source told Mediapart: “You can agree with the general idea and then think differently later when the things actually happen for real.”
It was on January 1st, 2018 that things became “real” on one of the issues that has attracted the most anger: the rise in the Contribution Sociale Généralisée (CSG), a supplementary tax levied to help fund the social security budget. The rise has hit many pensioners and the Élysée has been snowed under with letters of complaint.
“I know that I'm asking for an extra effort from older people, that sometimes some complain, it doesn't necessarily make one popular but I take responsibility,” President Macron said in his comments at Châlons-en-Champagne. A close aide thinks, however, that the government's attempts to explain its policies will bear fruit. “We think the CSG [rise] will be accepted over time,” says the aide. “When you know how to explain things you can go against the tide of public opinion.”
To win support the government has certainly not been shy about making use of some social clichés. An example, highlighted by Mediapart recently, concerns its planned reforms of France's railways and the public railway company the SNCF. By turning the spotlight on the status of rail workers and their supposed “exorbitant privileges” - even though the report the government itself commissioned on the railways did not consider it an urgent issue - Emmanuel Macron has sparked off a new battle for public opinion.
“I can't have farmers on the one hand who don't have any pension and on the other a rail workers' status and not change it,” the president said during his visit to the Salon de l'Agriculture farm show in Paris on February 24th. A source close to the rail company told Mediapart: “The Élysée knows that public opinion is going to be decisive when it comes to the SNCF. They will decide it. To avoid reviving the strikes of 1995 it has to get [opinion] on its side. And the sole way for the government to get the public on its side is [the rail workers'] status.”
Ten months after his election the president of the Republic knows that his presidency is now entering a new phase; the broad outline of his plans are already known and the French public is now discovering the detail of his policies. They are also discovering that the arguments in the autumn of 2017 about helping with the cost of living, in a bid to dispel the image of a “president for the wealthy”, were not followed up with concrete results in January 2018. By asking that people wait for the “work to be finished” and by citing support from some quarters for various measures, and even playing them off against others, the presidency is continuing to play for time. For the moment the strategy is working. But even though public opinion may indeed be “more mature” that many politicians when it comes to going along with changes, it is no less impatient.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter