The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-24)

12 The Sunday Times April 24, 2022

WORLD NEWS

weeks earlier, using English to make his

point. “Meaning both a nation that works

with and for start-ups, but also a nation

that thinks and moves like a start-up.”

As the French vote for a new president

today, they face a stark choice between

Macron, 44, liberal, outward-looking and

pro-European, and Marine Le Pen, 53, a

right-wing nationalist who envisages a

very different future for their homeland.

But after a stormy five years marked by

the gilets jaunes protests, Islamist terror-

ism, long Covid-19 lockdowns and war in

Ukraine, what has become of the

revolution that Macron promised during

his first presidential campaign in 2016?

The final opinion polls suggested he

could beat Le Pen by as much as 57 to

43 per cent, buoyed by the television

debate last Wednesday in which the

National Rally leader struggled to demon-

strate her fitness to become president.

But if the polls are proved correct and

Macron becomes the first French leader

in two decades to win a second term, can

he bring together a country whose fault

lines — generational, economic and

geographic — seem deeper than ever?

There is certainly an air of revolution at

Station F, where a drive to make money

often comes with a social conscience. In

2020 Valentine Robin, 24, set up Akho,

which turns unused fabric from haute

couture houses into sustainable clothing.

She saw on her gap year in South Africa

how rolls of unneeded cloth were sent

there to be burnt. “These are new

materials destroyed before they are even

used. It’s insane,” Robin, who predicts a

€300,000 turnover this year, said.

Clément Gavault, also 24, set up Fla-

kon, which sends vials of grand cru wines

to people to conduct home tastings and

employs five people. “It’s a really strong

message to have a young president who

says that if he hadn’t gone into politics he

would have been in a start-up,” he said.

Both Robin and Gavault are graduates

of Edhec, a French business school that is

Those who make it big can benefit from

another Macron reform: the abolition of a

wealth tax that used to be imposed on all

those with net assets — whether financial

or property — worth more than €1.3 mil-

lion a year, and its replacement by a levy

on property alone.

It is not just start-ups that are flourish-

ing: despite the disruption of Covid-19,

France’s unemployment rate has

dropped to 7.4 per cent from 9.5 per cent

in 2017 — its lowest since 2008. The fall

was even greater for the 15-24 age group:

down to 15.9 per cent from 24.7 per cent.

Macron’s team is suitably proud of this,

as I found when I came across a group of

people on the street outside my Paris

home distributing election flyers —

among them Stanislas Guerini, 39, head

of the president’s En Marche party.

What had been Macron’s greatest

achievement of the past five years, I

demanded, shoving my tape recorder in

front of him. “Apprenticeships,” Guerini

replied without hesitation. “It used to be

200,000 a year. Now, five years later, it’s

700,000, and 80 to 90 per cent of them

find a job when they finish. In 2017 every-

one talked about unemployment. In this

campaign it’s not a subject any more.”

France’s handling of Covid-19 was also

effective: unlike in Britain and many

other countries, French schools mostly

stayed open, and deaths were below the

EU average. Macron’s “no matter the

cost” system of economic support kept

the country afloat — though it sent govern-

ment debt soaring in September 2020 to a

record 116.4 per cent of GDP.

Balancing the books has not been

made easier by Macron’s faltering

attempts to streamline the bloated pen-

sion system. He began this campaign with

a pledge to raise the retirement age to 65

from 62, but swiftly watered it down after

it became clear it was a vote loser.

The administration’s record abroad

has also been mixed: grandiose plans to

revitalise the European Union,

announced by Macron in 2017, foundered

on a lack of enthusiasm from Berlin, and

French pride was hit last year when the

Australian government cancelled a €

billion contract to buy French subma-

rines in favour of a deal with Britain and

the US. Relations with Britain, whether

over fish or Channel migrants, have been

fraught.

Of more direct concern for Macron are

the rifts running through France, which

were laid bare by the results of the first

round of the election a fortnight ago and

will likely be so again by parliamentary

elections in June, in which Macron’s party

will struggle to retain its dominance of the

national assembly.

The president may have fans among

the twentysomethings at Station F but by

far the most popular candidate among

the young nationally was Jean-Luc Mélen-

chon, leader of the far-left France

Unbowed, who was eliminated after

being squeezed into third place. Macron

has found it hard to shake off the “presi-

dent of the rich” tag placed on him by

Mélenchon and other critics.

Even more fundamental is the geo-

graphical divide between the residents of

Paris and other big cities, and those who

live in smaller towns and the country.

The government is trying to reverse the

factory closures of the past decades and

reindustrialise France. But Christophe

Guilluy, an economic geographer who

has studied what he calls la France péri-

phérique (peripheral France) warns that it

is not easy reversing a trend that is in large

part the result of globalisation. “People

feel they are outside the system, and this

creates a very important and symbolic

resentment,” he said. “It’s also existential

— about the place you have in society.”

This resentment poses a challenge for

Macron. His final campaign trips were to

the rough Paris suburb of Saint Denis,

followed by Figeac, a community of 9,

people in the rural southwest. If he wins,

will he be able to persuade the people of

Saint Denis and Figeac that they are part

of his start-up nation, too?

agreed to avoid a repeat of the

scenario in 2016 when British

officials failed to reach out to

Donald Trump before his

White House victory.

In the event Le Pen wins,

Britain would want to

develop the relationship

“iteratively”, a source said.

“For instance, Russia/Ukraine

could be used as a test case to

see the extent to which our

interests with a Le Pen

presidency are or can be

aligned,” they added.

If Macron wins, ministers

have been encouraged to

contact their counterparts

with congratulations and seek

to arrange a face-to-face

meeting within 100 days. A

source familiar with the plans

said: “Officials have suggested

a 100 days after elections plan

for the government to test the

potential for an improved

bilateral relationship which is

seen to have reached a low

point over Aukus, migration,

and post-Brexit issues.

“Based on experience of

Macron so far, it is unlikely

that an improved bilateral

relationship will move the

French towards a more

accommodating approach to

the UK on the Northern

Ireland protocol and small

boats.”

lThe first exit poll is

expected around 7pm

(UK time) tonight.

Boris Johnson is drawing up

plans for a new entente

cordiale with France before

Emmanuel Macron’s

expected return to office.

Senior officials have

discussed a cross-Whitehall

approach to the first 100 days

after today’s French

presidential elections, with

hopes of a rapprochement

between the leaders.

Disputes over Brexit,

fishing rights,

cross-Channel migration and

the Aukus defence pact with

Australia and the US have left

relations in tatters.

The assumption among

British officials is that Macron

will be first the French

president in 20 years to win a

second term. All opinion polls

in recent days point to a

victory for the 44-year-old

pro-European centrist,

although the margin over his

nationalist rival, Marine Le

Pen, appears uncertain,

varying from 6 to 15

percentage points.

However, Liz Truss, the

foreign secretary, is not

leaving anything to chance

and has ordered officials at

the embassy in Paris to

engage with members of Le

Pen’s party too. This is

understood to have been

Caroline Wheeler

Political Editor

To grasp Emmanuel Macron’s vision for

the future of France, head to a former rail-

way freight depot in southeast Paris. Sta-

tion F claims to be the largest start-up

campus in the world. Among brightly col-

oured furniture, table football and quirky

sculptures, young men and women are

striving to create companies that will be

the household names of tomorrow.

When the complex opened in June

2017, the recently elected Macron went to

inaugurate it. “I want France to be a

start-up nation,” he had declared a few

Macron’s battle

to liberalise

France has

only just begun

If the president beats

Marine Le Pen, he faces

an even stormier second

term trying to reform

his stubborn country

PETER

CONRADI

Paris

People

feel left

out of the

system

a big partner of Station F and incubates 50

entrepreneurs there a year. Ludovic Cail-

luet, the school’s associate dean, says the

emphasis on entrepreneurship began

under the Socialist government of Presi-

dent Hollande, in which Macron was

economy minister, but has intensified,

with measures to help start-ups to gain

funding, including several billion euros a

year from a public investment bank.

Cailluet said many graduates now wanted

to start businesses, unlike “20 years ago,

when people wanted to be employed by

big companies or the government”.

In September 2019 Macron said he

wanted to see 25 start-ups valued at more

than $1 billion — by 2025. It hit the target

this January but still lags behind Britain.

Macron’s vision of a tech-savvy,

start-up nation won over Clément

Gavault, who runs a wine company

DAMIEN MEYER

After the bruising

rows, Britain seeks

an entente cordiale