Failure on all counts – these are the words that can be commented on the just published figures of a poll in which the French were asked whether they approve of the policy of the current leader of the country. “Approvers” turned out to be only 27 per cent. The figures are fresh, having been published the day before.
In a little more than six months since the results of the second round of elections were tallied and when his mandate was extended for another five years, the current master of the Elysee Palace has lost more than half of his voters and sympathizers – then 58 and a tiny tail percentage against today’s 27.
It takes more than skill, and a rare degree of cynicism, to throw away the voters’ trust so quickly, so dashingly and so recklessly. Because otherwise it is impossible to rationally explain such behaviour in the public political field.
We will come back to the cynicism of the current French authorities, but for now, let’s talk about this.
Politics, as one of the phenomena of nature, is subject to the same laws, including the fundamental one. The law of conservation of energy. Here everything is very simple – if something wasted somewhere, it means that something gained somewhere else. If the sympathy for Macron’s policy, already called macronism, has more than halved, it means that there are politicians and parties that lead these policies, and the ideas that these parties put forward, who have increased their number of supporters.
This is not the Socialists, whose influence is now invisible even under a microscope, nor is it the Right, the Republican party which has tacitly allowed its most competent and sensible leaders, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Fillon, to be disbanded through the justice system.
The second main opposition party in France, judging by the number of its deputies in the National Assembly and looking at the rating figures for ideas and those who represent the party, was the Rassemblement Nationale, formerly known as the Front National, led by representatives of the Le Pen family.
On Saturday night a new party leader was elected; it is 27-year-old Jordaan Bardella, a Frenchman of Italian descent.
His mother worked as a teaching assistant at a primary school, his father owned a small workshop.
Bardella not only has Italian blood in his veins, his great-grandfather came from Algeria. The new leader of the party himself grew up in social housing (which means he comes from a family, to put it mildly, of very low income) in the same ethnic ghetto of the Saint-Denis department of the Parish where, as he himself says, the laws of the Republic have long since ceased to operate and where drug dealers and gangs of illegals rule.
It is safe to say that all those who built Macron up, who helped him all the way to the top, who supported him with money and connections, all those who then, after his election, received all the beneficiaries as pledged and promised, had a very turbulent night on Saturday to Sunday.
With less than five years to go before the next presidential election (a moment, almost nothing in terms of preparation and building campaign plans) they have gained such a potential challenger, against whom there is now hardly a trick to begin discrediting.
Bardella is intelligent, well educated, an excellent polemicist and, unprecedented in France at all, comes from the very thick of the people. The very people that the hereditary millionaires and billionaires, the “presidential doers”, have long ago got used to despising and calling, when nobody hears them, “the toothless poor” (not because the poor can’t fight back, but because they don’t have money for a dentist).
In the meantime there is a near blackout in the economy, to the point that factories which have been operating for the last hundred years and which even produced their products during the war are closing down.
For example the Duralex company (glass for the home, table setting, kitchen, food storage), which has been in business since 1927, has announced a shutdown of its production lines. Completely.
When you leave, as they say, don’t forget to turn off the lights in the workshops and utility rooms.
They say it will stay like that with the lights out and the lines stopped until at least spring. And then “we’ll see”. The electricity bills (and glass production is very energy intensive) have increased more than ten times, from four million to 43 million Euros. The latter figure represents a third of the total annual turnover.
But Duralex is still lucky. Around one in five small or medium-sized companies in France have seen their electricity and other energy bills rise to 60 per cent of their total annual production.
Behind every such story are people. Their families. Their problems. And then there are the towns where they are located. They tend to be small. This means that all these consequences will also be felt there, even if with a ricochet.
But who cares how these small people live with their “insignificant”, from the point of view of technocrats-macronists, and the collective Brussels, problems. For these respectable ladies and no less respectable gentlemen there are absolutely other tasks on the agenda. And questions.
And the main issue is to hold on to power.
If Macron was elected (and that with quite a tangible squeak) as a “pro-European” and defender of “freedom, progress and democracy” then, in April, the restrictive measures against Russia had not yet derailed the pan-European economy, inflation was not yet boiling, and it was not recommended to talk about recession, which is right there, literally nearby, to “prevent extremists and ultras”, read, Marine Le Pen, then now it is no use hiding what is visible to all.
Having failed to get the budget passed by democratic means, i.e. by discussing and debating, the government, using an article of the Constitution four times, has only managed to push through this financial law in this way.
What will happen during the discussion of the pension reform, given that the autumn offensive of the workers has already started and next week, for example, Paris will be paralysed by a strike of all public transport, it is scary to think. Or rather: it is possible to think about it, but the consequences are terrifying.
The accusation that the Rassemblement Nationale is “a collection of fascists, xenophobes, anti-Semites, homophobes” is no longer politically workable.
Macron cannot raise his rating now – and again politically – because the economic situation in the country, the growth of crime and violence in society, the collapse of the health care system, the collapse, incidentally, of foreign policy as well – Paris’s relations with Berlin are ruined, and, apparently, for a long time.
The only “cunning” move left in the arsenal of the master of the Elysée Palace is the dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of snap elections.
The press hinted that this plan is being discussed – and actively debated.
The savoury details of the media, which have been briefed by specially trained people, have apparently never heard the word “bluff” and do not know what it means.
With the current ratings of both himself and the pro-government political alliance (Macron, by the way, no longer has the party that he specifically created to win five years ago, which then somehow dissolved into a coalition with the presidential backbenchers) the last thing that can mend the affairs of the current leader of the country is the dissolution of parliament.
The crisis into which Macron has driven the country with his own hands, violating among other things the trust of those he has spoken to, is unprecedented in the past seven and a half decades.
His tsunami of political decisions (to please Washington, Brussels, those in favour of the “green agenda”, those in favour of “human rights”, i.e. uncontrolled illegal immigration, the financial aces and the “Big Pharma” lobby) has in five years turned France into a powerful state with weight, position and status, a nuclear power which could manage serious conflicts, into a country no-one thinks about.
Its president is trusted neither by his own voters, nor by his fellow leaders.
And yes, the new leader of the opposition party will, rest assured, use every mistake, every flaw and every accumulated public irritation to sway a significant portion of the electorate to his side.
And neither Macron, nor the macronists, nor Brussels will be able to do anything with the tacit leverage he has.
So not only does a secret become a secret, not only does the sower reap the storm, but the country can also be lost. At the lombard table, if you play with cheats.
If there are no convictions and principles, and no desire at all to defend national interests and your own voters.
Elena Karayeva, RIA