n a sunny spring
morning on the Left
Bank, le tout Paris
has turned out in
finest funereal chic
to mourn a national
treasure, Jean-Pierre
Pernaut, who has died
of lung cancer at the
age of 71. A hero of
the French hinterland,
he presented the
lunchtime television
news for more than
three decades and was
famous for rushing
through grim world
events to dwell
lovingly on stories
about shellfish,
terroir and cheese.
“Look, there’s
Sarko!” says an onlooker behind a metal
barrier outside the Sainte-Clotilde church.
The former president, Nicolas Sarkozy,
has just arrived with his wife, Carla Bruni,
the singer and former supermodel, her
face obscured by a dark scarf and large
sunglasses. Then an elegant blonde woman
appears in a long black coat. It is Brigitte
Macron, 68, a former schoolteacher and
now the première dame. “Qu’elle est belle! ”
exclaims a woman on my right. “But
where is Manu?”
When he was elected president in
2017, promising a French renaissance,
modernisation and wave of reforms,
Emmanuel Macron was the youngest
French leader since Napoleon. Now
aged 44, he has become the most hated
after five years of protest and strikes.
Even as France emerges from the
pandemic it remains in a dark and
dangerous mood, torn over issues of
national identity and immigration. With
the approach of a presidential election,
Macron is wary of crowds, his forays
beyond palace walls increasingly scripted
affairs. In an unusual contest overshadowed
by the war in Ukraine, he has refused to
participate in any debate until after the first
round of voting next Sunday, after which
the top two scorers in a crowded field will
face off in a final round two weeks later.
Macron does not make it to Pernaut’s
funeral but two days earlier, in his first
campaign meeting or “conversation” as it is
billed, the candidate makes an appearance
in Poissy, an hour northwest of Paris. He is
wearing his favourite navy suit and a radiant
smile but he sounds almost contrite. “I’m
here with a lot of humility,” he tells a
hand-picked audience almost outnumbered
by a legion of stagehands, press minders
and security men in a local cultural centre.
It feels more like a film set than a political
rally as preselected questions are put to
the president through the local mayor,
playing chat show host. At one point a
young Macronista technician comes up
to me in a panic: “You have to move,
you’re in all the shots.”
Macron has visibly aged since I last saw
him five years ago, with lines beginning to
mark the once boyish visage. Events have
taken their toll, from violent rioting to the
pandemic and the eruption of the biggest
conflict in Europe since the Second World
War. The know-it-all president used to relish
coming down from his cloud to engage
with ordinary mortals. Not any more.
Mock guillotines and dummies of his
— and Brigitte’s — head on a pike appeared
on the streets during the yellow-vest
protests that engulfed his presidency for
five months from November 2018, sparked
by a fuel price rise and a lower speed limit
on rural roads.
Cries of “Death to the king” were also
heard and, on one occasion, the president’s
armour-plated Citroën was mobbed by a
crowd banging on the roof and windows,
kicking the tyres. “I thought they were
going to lynch me,” he was reported to have
told Brigitte when he returned to the Élysée
Palace later that day. Last year a man linked
to the gilets jaunes slapped him on the face
as he mingled with citizens in a town in
southeastern France.
The figure once described by the press
as “Jupiter”, king of the gods, who had
won victory in May 2017 under the banner
of a centrist movement he had founded
only the year before, has crashed from
Olympus. He no doubt regrets having told
an unemployed gardener he met on a
walkabout in 2018 that all he had to do was
“cross the street” and he would easily find a
job in catering or construction. Campaigning
in 2017 for the presidency, he infuriated
people with quips about “slackers”, people
who are “nothing” and their “unreformable
country”. It helped to promote the image
of him as scornful and aloof.
Yet for all the fury — and barring an
extraordinary upset — this art-loving
former Rothschild banker and finance
minister is expected to rise once more,
becoming the first president in 20 years
to win a second term in office in the final-
round vote on April 24. For this he can thank
the failings of his rivals. For all her efforts to
detoxify her far-right National Rally party,
Marine Le Pen, running in second place, is
still deemed a threat to democracy by a
majority of the country, according to polls.
A more plausible challenger, Valérie
Pécresse, a conservative former education
minister under Sarkozy, has disappointed
supporters with a lacklustre launch and
lack of charisma, and has failed to gain
much momentum. Neither have the other,
noisier campaigners, from Éric Zemmour,
O
Above: a demonstrator in Paris evokes a grisly end to labour reforms, March
- Below: Macron is slapped while on a walkabout by a man linked to the
“gilets jaunes” last year; on the campaign trail in Poissy last month
10 • The Sunday Times Magazine
