On Wednesday, October 30, while Emmanuel Macron was given a majestic welcome to Rabat by the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, Le Figaro newspaper published a Verian-Epoka poll. The poll shows a spectacular drop in the president's popularity rating (17%), lower than at the time of the Yellow Vests crisis. More unpopular than ever, Macron is preparing for a long and painful end to his reign.
Indeed, since his failed dissolution of the Assemblée Nationale, which acts like a slow poison, everything seems to be slipping away from him. The president finds himself faced with a triple challenge: To exist alongside his prime minister, who is beginning to make his mark; to make amends with his coalition of MPs, formerly in the majority, whom he traumatized by deciding to dissolve the Assemblée; and to reconnect with the French people, all while preserving a track record that risks being overshadowed by the public debt, which has grown by nearly €1,000 billion since 2017.
For the time being, he appears to be strangely absent, as if disconnected from himself. Four months after his defeat in the parliamentary elections, he has had no choice but to withdraw on the international stage. On the domestic scene, Macron has been caught between a rock and a hard place: On the one hand, he needs Michel Barnier, the prime minister, to succeed, as his failure would put pressure on the president; on the other, he has been annoyed by Barnier's budgetary choices, and has found it hard to bear the fact that the spotlight has turned away from the Elysée, in favor of the prime minister.
Less involved in the government's affairs, the president has been discreetly counter-attacking. He has told everyone he meets that the government is "not his," forgetting that members of his political coalition occupy half of the ministerial positions. Moreover, he has never missed an opportunity to make his differences of opinion heard, whether directly or by proxy, giving observers the impression that he was making plays against the government. When his former minister, Gérald Darmanin, aimed to criticize Barnier's tax choices, he didn't discourage him. He encouraged one of his legal scholar friends to speak out on the rule of law, to counter Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, whose right-wing line he has said he disapproves of. Moreover, on October 25, before an audience of business figures at the Elysée, he publicly expressed his annoyance at "the tax hikes and higher labor costs that are weighing on companies."
You have 63.57% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.