September all the time lands with a thump in France. It’s la rentrée, or the good return: back-to-school on steroids. All that which has been suspended within the languorous days of July and August — when seemingly the entire nation turns off the lights, closes the shutters and retreats to the seashore or the mountains — is again with a vengeance. Payments are due, the commute is again on, workloads are onerous, financial institution are accounts empty, social calendars are unmanageably full.
However in 2024, la rentrée hangover is worse than ever. Final night time, the Olympics and Paralympics got here to an in depth in a burst of fireworks over the Stade de France. Paris pulled off each video games with severe panache, enchanting the world with astonishing venues, superhuman feats and the odd dancing clitoris. The top of the video games coincided with the tip of the halcyon fever dream that gripped the nation over summer season — one by which the far-right may truly be crushed.
In snap parliamentary elections in June and July, by which the Nationwide Rally got here inside touching distance of actual political energy for the primary time, a coalition of left-wing events shocked the nation by ending first, although in need of a majority. And for as soon as, slicing by way of the reduction of stuffing the neofascist jack-in-the-box Marine Le Pen again into her container was an odd hope there could be a real various to her politics of hate and the milquetoast neoliberal technocracy now we have had since Macron gained the 2017 presidency. Some have been even backing the googly-eyed anthropomorphised headwear-meets-sex-organ mascot for PM.
However after two months of a caretaker authorities and an “Olympic truce” — throughout which we have been all solely too pleased to consider something apart from politics — Macron, who had known as the elections within the first place to hunt “readability” from French voters, introduced his choose for the prime minister of his new authorities: former Brexit negotiator, authorities minister and stalwart of the normal proper, Michel Barnier.
The left coalition may actually have performed the state of affairs extra cannily. The members of the New Common Entrance, which contains the normal left, the greens, the unconventional left and the communists, went into the parliamentary elections and not using a prime ministerial candidate, presumably as a result of these erstwhile political foes couldn’t agree on who it needs to be. After their shock first-place end, they took greater than two weeks to lastly resolve on one, the little-known civil servant Lucie Castets.
We have no idea whether or not Castets would have made prime minister as a result of Macron by no means severely thought-about her. He invited her to the Élysée Palace solely to dismiss her candidacy, claiming a left-coalition-led authorities would instantly fall in a no-confidence vote in Parliament — in all probability true, as a result of few in Parliament will work with the unconventional left France Unbowed get together, the biggest element of the New Common Entrance.
Macron briefly flirted with the thought of appointing a former grandee from the traditional-left Socialists, however ended up plumping for Barnier, whose get together, the Republicans, completed final of all the most important gamers in the summertime elections. His authorities won’t fall instantly, as a result of it is going to benefit from the assist of the Nationwide Rally. In different phrases, in refusing to work with the left, Macron has turned the far proper into kingmakers. (The New Common Entrance was characterised by many politicians over the summer season as too riven with antisemitism to work with. For Macron and Barnier, the get together based by a former member of the SS Waffen, whose candidates have been precise Nazis, was apparently fantastic.)
After the horror and promise of the elections, the brand new authorities was imagined to be a brand new daybreak for a political panorama that has been riven with division, uncertainty and disenchantment bordering on nihilism for the perfect a part of a decade. It was hoped in some quarters {that a} prime minister from the left may put a cease to Macron governing basically by fiat, pushing by way of unpopular insurance policies just like the current retirement reforms with out parliamentary approval, utilizing a constitutional energy often called Article 49.3. As an alternative, France’s new headteacher, a minimum of throughout the back-to-school interval, is yet one more conservative technocrat, now with the added frisson of having fun with the backing of the identical far-right many people spent the hotter months striving to defeat.
Once more, our political vocabulary fails us: Barnier, as a consequence of not being from a celebration with a wealthy custom of Holocaust denial, is described as “centre-right”, whereas Macron and his get together declare with diminishing credibility to occupy the centre. However it’s not a centrist place to advocate for a moratorium on immigration, as Barnier did when he was working to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2022. That is the politics of the mad Brexiteer Nigel Farage, Barnier’s supposed foe, and or Geert Wilders, beneath whose aegis the present Dutch authorities operates. In the meantime, the Macron authorities’s immigration invoice from 2023 was sufficiently hostile for Le Pen to say it as a victory. It is a centre that has not held.
Macron’s merry political gamble to attempt to reset Parliament to see if it got here out extra to his liking has left him with a first-rate minister who appears like lots of those that got here earlier than him — although at 73 he’s simply shy of 40 years older than outgoing PM Gabriel Attal. It has additionally left France with a file 126 Nationwide Rally deputies in Parliament, which is what permits them to play kingmaker within the first place.
This summer season, the far proper got here the closest it ever has to actual political energy in France, and as soon as once more, voters banded collectively to disclaim them that chance. The most important proportion of them supported the left. After an election marketing campaign that was genuinely terrifying for a large number of folks on this nation and a number of other months of political horse-trading, now we have ended up with a first-rate minister whose get together holds the smallest variety of seats in Parliament, who desires to cease immigration and who serves on the pleasure of Marine Le Pen.
Since 2017, Macron has outlined his presidency as representing the wise various to the existential menace posed by the far proper. Historical past might keep in mind him as its handmaiden.
