LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

How Emmanuel Macron is crushing the French liberalism he promised

He arrived as a clean slate for progressives to write their hopes on. Four years later, writes Louise Michel, the president has set the stage for the Fifth Republic’s nastiest election ever

© CHRISTIAN HARTMANN/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

In February, France got a sneak peek at the presidential race taking shape for next year: far-right leader Marine Le Pen and President Emmanuel Macron’s interior minister Gérald Darmanin faced each other in a TV debate. Coinciding with the Assemblée Nationale’s discussion of a new law on “separatism,” the debate centred on immigration, integration and Islamism. These are the issues already setting the rhythm in the race for the Élysée-issues that seem strange priorities amid a pandemic.

Darmanin, standing in for his boss-who not long ago was seen as the last best hope for European liberals-described Le Pen as “too soft on Islam.” The country’s most famous chauvinist, looking stunned, found herself defending her fellow citizens’ right to religious freedom. Skimming through Darmanin’s newly published book on “Islamist separatism,” she responded: “Your book, I could have written it.”

Le Monde feared that Darmanin’s stance had offered Le Pen an unexpected gift: “de-demonisation by proxy,” which is to say the more devilish her opponent was willing to appear, the less diabolical she would seem. A recent poll showed Macron and Le Pen nearly neck and neck in the presidential runoff, with Le Pen on 48 to Macron’s 52 per cent. A researcher for the Institut Montaigne think tank told me he feared the debate in the country could entrench the parity between a “Le Pen-ised government” and a “presidentialised Le Pen.”

It should be shocking that this is shaping up to be a competitive contest. Last time round, in 2017, Macron campaigned as a “barrier against the far right,” and received two votes in every three (65 per cent) against Le Pen, leader of the National Front. (She has since rebranded her party National Rally.) But back in 2002, although the mainstream conservative Jacques Chirac mustered a mere 20 per cent in the first round, he was able to rally a broad “republican front” mop- ping up everyone to his left, in order to block Marine’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen: Chirac ultimately won 82 per cent of the vote. Even though his own majority was still comfortable, Macron seemed conscious that he had been unable to duplicate the breadth of Chirac’s “front.” Speaking on election night, the youngest French ruler since Napoleon claimed to have heard the nation’s “anger, anxiety and doubts.” He promised that he would “do everything, during the five [following] years, so that the French would no longer have any reason to vote for the extremes.” Four years on, his plan for obstructing Le Pen’s path to power has turned out to be emulating her most prejudiced policies.