04 May 2017
Et Après?
Is France ready for a messiah?
By Richard Pooley
I was wallowing in French nostalgia last Saturday night. My wife and I were in a church in Queyssac-les-Vignes, a village ten minutes’ drive from us which sits on a saddle of land rising out from the northern rim of the Dordogne valley. You can see a lot of France: to the east as far as the extinct volcanoes in the Puy-de-Dôme; to the west across oak-forested plateaux, cut through by lush tributary valleys, to where Julius Caesar’s legions snuffed out the final Gaulish resistance to Roman rule. It’s a one-road place, once populous and relatively prosperous (those vignes), now so run-down that one in four of the houses either side of the road near the church is derelict – overgrown with ivy, or roofless ruins out of which trees are growing. Its population of 214 appears to mostly consist of retirees, though French friends of ours there gave up city life and modern jobs to make a go of a farm run along strictly bio lines – horses instead of tractors, no pesticides or herbicides. There were around sixty of us in the church, all locals except us two Brits and three Dutch.
We spent a happy two and a half hours listening to Univers Brassens, a group of four musicians who tour the region like modern troubadours, covering the great chanson numbers of the last century – songs by Brassens, Brel, Ferrat, Leclerc, Nougaro, Leprest and Chelon. The singer and lead guitarist, Jacques Barnabé, went to school in our village. The others, Bernard (double bass), Christian (keyboard and accordion) and Marc (guitar, banjo and singer) certainly looked and sounded local, behaving in conformity with the British stereotype of a Frenchman. The songs of love and loss, of poverty and protest, delivered with gusto and great skill, still had the power to move the audience. Brel’s song lamenting the assassination by a far-right nationalist of the great Socialist leader and pacifist, Jean Jaurès, three days before the outbreak of World War One, had us close to tears. And, of course, this and other chansons must have reminded many of the current battle to win their hearts and minds.
At one point I found myself gazing at Jeanne d’Arc’s statue. I have yet to visit a Catholic church in France which does not have one. It always makes me feel uncomfortable, a bit like a German must feel when he sees the long list of names on French war memorials. Yes, I know she was forgotten for the four hundred years after she was burnt to death in 1431, was only revived as a French heroine to bind Church and State together in the 19th century and only made a saint in 1920. And I know she was actually captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English, and only a tiny number of her prosecutors and judges were English… but even so, there she is, the secular patron saint of France, the example to all French, even modern-day Burgundians, of their valour and love of liberty against English perfidy and love of money. And, of course, Marine Le Pen has tried hard all her political life to get the French to see her as the embodiment of Jeanne d’Arc, even appearing on a horse (she’s an accomplished horsewoman) beside the heroine’s golden statue in Paris. Her father was there with some two hundred Front National loyalists on May 1st, as he has been every year for as long as anyone can remember. Marine was elsewhere in the capital on that day but she would not have minded her père being there, burnishing her image as France’s messiah.
Some in and outside France have wondered whether Marine’s rival, Emmanuel Macron, sees himself as a messiah too. Certainly some of his supporters seem close to worshiping him. Why, cynics ask, did his parents name him Emmanuel – God is with us in Hebrew and the name used in the Old Testament for the Messiah? What kind of person deliberately uses his initials when naming his new political movement – En Marche! (don’t tell me you didn’t notice)? Did he mean this to echo the stirring line in the chorus of La Marseillaise – “Marchons, marchons!” Of course he did, right down to that exclamation mark. Though perhaps the two lines which follow fit more with his rival’s anti-immigrant and anti-elite policies: “Qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons” (“Let an impure blood water our furrows!”).
The question I keep asking myself is this: are the French ready for a Messiah, whether she be a far-right, anti-EU, draw-up-the-drawbridge-and-leave-us-alone one, or whether he be a centrist, pro-EU, welcome-world, do-come-in one? Do the French really feel their social and economic model is broken and needs radical solutions to make it work again? Some do: those young French people, such as my son-in-law, who have fled their country to seek their fortune abroad; the one in four French adults under the age of 25 who can’t find a job; the many economically-literate retirees who can see all too clearly that without major change the French State will soon simply be unable to pay the pensions they have been promised or to keep the French national health service either healthy or serviceable. But what about the rest, especially the millions of state employees in jobs guaranteed for life and the unionised workforces of the big companies?
I spent the afternoon of March 3rd in the nearby town of Brive as one of three panellists listening to two groups of French business students pitch their product ideas to us. It was a fake version of Dragons’ Den. I do this once a year as a favour to a British friend, an ex-policeman, who runs courses in English and Negotiations for the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry. I agreed to do it this year as long as Mark would let me have half an hour afterwards with his sixteen students. All bar two of the students already work for local companies. I wanted to know what they thought their political leaders should do to solve France’s economic problems. I hoped to pass on these opinions to Shaw Sheet readers in the following week’s article. But then, a few days later, François Fillon did yet another stupid thing and I had to write about that instead.
So, here is a summary of what those students said:
- Have clean, uncorrupt leaders.
- Reform the Labour Law and have fewer rules so that companies can grow.
- Reduce taxes and social security payments.
- Pay companies to take on apprentices and provide free training.
- Find new ways to create companies.
- Reduce the pressure on small companies.
One said “In the US they say ‘It’s possible’. The Chinese say ‘We’ll copy’. But in France we say ‘No, it can’t be done’.” This got a round of applause, more I think for the panache in which it was delivered and for his excellent English than for its content. Quite a few referred to the lack of “freedom” in France to innovate, to experiment, to be different. Also one, who had gone to London with few skills but an urge to learn English, had been amazed at how he was judged by what he could do and by his can-do attitude rather than by his qualifications. He’d started as a waiter and ended up with a good junior management job on Eurostar. He wants to go back as soon as this course is over next June, though he is worried by the reports from friends in London of the rise in anti-foreigner abuse and xenophobia.
But what struck me most about these sixteen young businesspeople was how unwilling they were to accept that their medical and social security system needed reforming. The loudest and most sustained applause was for the only thing said by one woman: “But we must not destroy our social security system!” Her hand banging the table made me put in that exclamation mark.
Six of those sixteen said nothing, not, I suspect, because they were not confident about speaking English, but more because they did not agree with their colleagues. My guess is that eight to ten of the sixteen – those who were willing to speak – will be voting for Macron. I would not be surprised if the others vote for Le Pen.
A couple of French friends – one Republican (I think), one Socialist – told me separately last year that they were convinced Marine Le Pen did not want to win this time round; she had set her sights on winning in 2022. Their reasoning was this: France is not yet ready for her. The Socialists had utterly failed to solve France’s problems. Best for her and the Front National if the centre-right Republicans won in 2017 and mess up too. Then who would the French turn to in five years’ time? Their saviour: Marine.
I think my friends could well have been right. In January Le Pen described the candidacy of Macron as “un cadeau” for her. I thought she was being arrogant and complacent. But maybe by then she saw him as the one who would be most likely to fail should he become president. Say she gets 40% of the vote on Sunday. She will have established herself as unquestionably in the mainstream of French politics. She will then do her damnedest in the next five years to make sure Macron fails to introduce the economic and social reforms this country so desperately needs but may not be ready to accept. And in 2022 she is hoping she will be able to point to the UK and say “Look, France, like the UK, can survive outside the EU.”
I am writing this before the final televised debate between Macron and Le Pen takes place on Wednesday night. It starts at 21.00 and goes on to 23.20. By the time you read this you will know how well each one did in presenting their case and whether there is any likelihood that the pollsters’ prediction of an easy Macron win will be proved wrong. A word of warning though. The debate will begin fifteen minutes after the first leg of the Champion League’s semi-final between Monaco and Juventus kicks off. In 2007, 20 million people watched the final debate between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal; in 2012, 17 million stayed up to watch François Hollande battle it out with Sarkozy. How many will watch this time round? How many are ready to be convinced that change – radical, painful change – is needed if France is to prosper once more? Or would they prefer to watch le foot?
Me? Okay, I’ll watch a little of the debate. But I might then switch the new world off and listen to some old music. Perhaps some Jaques Brel or Georges Brassens.
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