In any presidency, as with a photograph, there are moments of revelation. A mix of political indicators that slowly allows an image to appear, and which ultimately comes into focus. That is the moment when doubts, theories and questions start to emerge. For a year Emmanuel Macron had been protected from this phenomenon. The youngest president of the French Republic ever elected, the object of curiosity on the international stage, and the chief beneficiary of the political massacre of traditional parties in the 2017 elections, up to then the new president had rolled out his reform agenda with disconcerting ease.
But in the space of just a few months everything has changed dramatically. In the spring of this year those close to him started to have misgivings over the turn of events while the youthful enthusiasm of his supporters gradually gave way to criticism, sometimes savage in nature. In ministerial private offices, among Parliamentarians in the ruling La République en Marche (LREM) party and even within the president's immediate entourage many people began to face up to the fact that there was a problem. And a serious problem at that, because it directly involves the president of the Republic himself, the first cog in the machinery of the Fifth Republic's institutions.
“Emmanuel Macron has a dynamic image which can still create an illusion but when you look at the situation in detail, you realise that he is in a much more weakened position than François Hollande was at the same period,” says one government advisor. “He's got no one around him. He's alone, very alone.” Evidence of this is that even his loyal lieutenants are today keeping their distance, as for instance the interior minister Gérard Collomb. Not only has he criticised the head of state publicly, he has also weakened him politically by announcing his forthcoming departure from the government to stand again to be mayor of Lyon, well before those elections take place in 2020.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
It seems that Collomb has no intention of going down with the rest of the crew. “Just because I'm playing host to the future emperor of Japan doesn't mean I have plans to be a kamikaze, sword in my stomach, no way,” he told a handful of journalists in mid-September this year, according to reports in La Dépêche du Midi newspaper. Having been in something of a political strop for several months over a number of decisions made by the administration – in particular plans to reduce the speed limit to 80kmh on certain roads – Collomb, who is number three in the government, finally acknowledged the breach at the time of the Benalla affair.
That episode left marks that went well beyond Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, the street that separates the Élysée from the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior in Place Beauvau. The disastrous handling of this affair implicitly revealed the weakness of a government which appears not to have understood that the highest functions of state are not conducted in the same way that you run a presidential election campaign. There is no doubt in the minds of everyone, including supporters of Emmanuel Macron: presidential security aide Alexandre Benalla should have been removed from his post as soon as the events of May 1st, 2018 - when he was caught on video beating up a protestor – were known.
Instead, for some weeks the president of the Republic continued to get embroiled in the case, even going so far as to make a direct call to the conservative president of the French Senate, Gérard Larcher, to complain about the work of the Senate commission of inquiry into the Benalla affair. “It's pure madness,” says one MP from the president's own ruling party the LREM. “They're out of control.” By “they” the MP means “the people at the Élysée”; the head of state himself, of course, the members of his office – which is being reorganised – and especially the president's closest colleague of all Alexandre Kohler, secretary-general of the Elysée and Macron's chief of staff, who is himself caught up in an affair.
In Macron's inner circle no one hides the seriousness of the situation; the problems of the number two at the Élysée affect the presidency at the highest level and directly impacts on the president himself. “The two heads of the Élysée are in poor shape,” says someone close to the president. In such a situation it is hard to come up with clear ideas. But those ideas are needed at a time when incomprehension about what the government is doing is taking hold in the public mind. It means that whatever political initiatives do take place go unnoticed.
The events of September very publicly laid bare the government's weaknesses. On top of the Benalla and Kohler affairs, confusion spread to all parts of the Macron system. The surprise resignation of high-profile and popular environment minister Nicolas Hulot set the tone for the political mood after the summer break. Then came Gérard Collomb's comments and a series of government malfunctions which each in their own way showed that Emmanuel Macron was not in control of events. The result was that his two great plans, on poverty and health, which were supposed to highlight the government's social policies, passed completely unnoticed. “No one gives a damn,” says one minister with regret.
In the space of a handful of days, too, no fewer than three members of the government were publicly abandoned by the presidency or the prime minister's office. First there was the minister for public accounts, Gérald Darmanin, who for a week stubbornly defended the deduction of income tax at source as planned in January 2019, even as President Macron publicly aired his hesitations over the issue. Then culture minister Françoise Nyssen, herself embroiled in an affair over a listed building, announced a desire to reform the television license, only for this to be denied by the prime minister's office.
The third case involved the junior minister in charge of relations with Parliament, Christophe Castaner, who in his role as head of the LREM party had said that he wanted to “reflect” on inheritance taxation, forcing the president to let it be known that he was fiercely opposed to this idea. Added to these government muddles is the background noise over the future municipal elections in Paris, over which several ministers are already jostling for position in the hope of becoming candidate. It is almost as if the priority this autumn is to find an escape route as quickly as possible.
'The atmosphere is already that of the end of a presidency'
The Élysée and Matignon, the prime minister's office, continue to insist that relations between Emmanuel Macron and Édouard Philippe are “smooth”, yet some advisors in the shadows are already mapping out some scenarios. Some are putting forward the idea that the prime minister might be a candidate for mayor of Paris; others worry about it, fearing a “hidden agenda” and a “lack of loyalty” in relation to the president. Those same officials are irritated by the regular meetings between Philippe and his former colleagues at the conservative Les Républicains party. In short, everyone is openly slandering everyone, like one often sees at the end of an administration.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
In the ruling LREM, just as in the government, behind the stock expressions delivered without huge enthusiasm, individuals seem to be doing their own thing. “The problem is that the president doesn't frighten any more, they no longer fear him,” says an advisor. The concentration of powers at the Élysée has almost inevitably led to the head of state becoming isolated, and today he finds himself facing his difficulties on his own. The concept of the vertical nature of the presidency – as outlined by Emmanuel Macron himself – has come home to roost. The image of a republican monarch cut off from reality and deaf to criticisms, including the most “kindly”, has now taken hold.
The president's entourage bluntly acknowledge these difficulties while at the same time seeking to play them down. His allies point to other factors that make a president's task more challenging, such as the way the media now works, the role of social networks, people's personal ambitions, a lack of understanding of the president's methods, the complexity of the symbolic role of each French president in turn – Nicolas Sarkozy was seen as the omnipresent “hyper president”, François Hollande the “normal president” while Macron has been cast as the “presidential monarch” - and frames of reference that are ever more demanding when applied to the “new” world.
Nonetheless, several of those close to him swear that the president has analysed his failings. From now on, they say, he is going to work hard to put them right and avoid the “bunker effect” of the Élysée and respond to the expectations of a society that wants to play a role in political action. These aides speak of the need to continue the “educating” process and call for a return to the fundamental issues of what Macron and his reforms are all about. Yet this aim, which has been promised for some months, is regularly undermined by the 'little phrases' that the president often makes in public and which cause controversy, and also by his inability to desist from meddling in every issue. “He can't stop himself,” says someone who has supported him from the beginning. “He wants to deal with everything.”
So the Benalla affair was in the end down to Macron. “If they are looking for someone responsible, the only one responsible is me, and me alone. Let them come and get me,” Emmanuel Macron told followers in July not long after the Benalla affair broke, as if he had forgotten that under the French Constitution no one can “come and get” the president.
The choice of who should be boss of various state-run organisations and of state prosecutors is also made by President Macron, even if that undermines his ministers to a considerable extent. He also takes charge of the dialogue with Parliamentarians, and too bad if this is tough on the prime minister and the balance of the various institutions of state. The president also pores over the details of his government's reforms.
The exercise of power cannot be carried out in isolation. It is conducted through listening and requires an ability to calm things down. Yet if one believes several people who deal regularly with the president that is precisely the problem now. They worry about how those who supported Macron from the first round of the presidential election are now perceiving the presidency. For them the disappointment is considerable, especially as they have not yet seen the results of the government's reforms that they had been hoping for.
For when it comes to the economy, the centrepiece of Macron's plans, the results are quite frankly poor in some cases. The figures can be used to suit one's own argument but it is clear that growth this year is much weaker than in 2017. Apart from among the very well-off, spending power is low and the rate of unemployment remains largely unchanged as the number of jobs being created slows. “Emmanuel Macron has succeeded in making the situation worse in less than a year, that's a bit much,” says one former supporter who has now left the scene.
The problems have taken hold since since May 2018. After a year spent happily repeating that there was a direction and that the government just had to follow it, even the president's supporters no longer know where they are heading. When President Macron buried the report on tackling France's troubled suburbs produced by former minister Jean-Louis Borloo, and publicly humiliated him in the process, those supporters looked uncomfortably at their shoes. When the president refused to welcome the migrant rescue ship Aquarius into French ports, many of them fell off their chairs. And when President Macron advised a young man to cross the street to find work, others buried their heads in their hands.
After the summer break key figures have found their own ways of describing the government's problems. Some, such as interior minister Gérard Collomb, have criticised the general “lack of humility” in the administration. Others, such as François Bayrou, head of the centrist MoDem party who are allies of LREM, have called on Emmanuel Macron to give a “guiding principle” to his reforms and to “renew his connection with the French people”. Meanwhile in the private offices of government ministers there are officials - who wish to stay anonymous - who endlessly repeat that “things are not going well, not going well at all”. And there are still others who claim that “we're already in an atmosphere of the end of a presidency, where everyone is looking to find a new role”.
In this context the European elections of May 2019, which had initially been highlighted as an election that was tailor-made for the ruling La République en Marche party, now bring members of the government out in a cold sweat. In a bid to counter the extreme-right agenda in many parts of the European Union, the French government and the LREM have settled on a strategy of making the election a binary issue: Emmanuel Macron versus Hungarian and Italian heads of government Viktor Orban and Matteo Salvini. The problem is that this risks leaving many people feel unrepresented. This is also one of the reasons why the so-called 'moderate' section of the conservative Les Républicains, which had been seduced by Macron's appeal, is now distancing itself from the government.
So after a year in which he has lost a great deal of support from the centre left, which was seen by many of Macron's allies as the “cornerstone” of his movement, the president has now been abandoned by the centre right. Both in France, where local councillors are up in arms, and on the international stage, where he can count his allies on the fingers of one hand, Macron's room for manoeuvre is getting smaller and smaller at a rate of knots. And this after barely 17 months in office.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter