It was one of those moments that encapsulate an entire relationship: Emmanuel Macron, having delivered a 20-minute speech to the UN General Assembly in which he announced France had recognised a nebulous “State of Palestine”, was standing on Manhattan’s First Avenue, barred from crossing it by an apologetic, smiling New York cop, because of an impending presidential motorcade.
Told for a second time he couldn’t be let through, the French president whipped out his iPhone and called Donald Trump to tell him he was “waiting in the street because everything is closed for you”. (Whatever El Donaldo said, Macron then answered “I know, I will follow”.) By that time aware he was being filmed, Macron brought the short conversation back to a more official level: “But you know, I would love if we can have a short discussion with Qatar on the situation in Gaza…”
“All political careers end in failure” said Ronald Reagan, whose own didn’t. With a year and a half to go, without a parliamentary majority (or indeed more than a caretaker Cabinet) that means he can only constitutionally act on foreign and defence affairs, Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to infuse the remainder of his two-term presidency with relevance led him to his latest diplomatic initiative.
That, after considerable lobbying, he managed to bring Keir Starmer onside, as well as a number of liberal-led countries from Canada and Australia to Portugal or Malta, is comforting him in the delusion that he is snatching the mantle from Jacques Chirac and his FM Dominique de Villepin. Both similarly opposed the Iraq war at the UN in 2003: blanket anti-Americanism used to pay off in French politics.
But the very nature of our countries has changed since. After a couple of years of increasingly violent pro-Gaza marches, 78 per cent of the French (roughly all of those who won’t vote for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-Left France Unbowed) oppose the recognition of Palestine and, unconvinced by Macron’s argument that it is “the only way to isolate Hamas”, fear that it will comfort it instead and may cause “more”, not fewer “terrorist attacks on our soil”. France has pre-emptively declared that all Palestinian “refugees” are entitled to automatic asylum. (A recent initiative to invite some 300 Palestinian students to reputed French universities, all expenses paid, was hastily withdrawn after candidate after candidate was revealed to have posted anti-Semitic tracts on social media, glorifying Adolf Hitler rather than encouraging any kind of two-State solution.) As a legacy-burnishing move, this may not be as successful as Macron believes.
It is, however, typical of a man who spent his presidency lecturing people – from job-seekers to Yellow Vest marchers to farmers to Sorbonne academics to French Jews to professional diplomats – on things he knows less about than they do. (It might help him secure his dream next job, succeeding Ursula von der Leyen or António Guterres, although neither is a done deal). Meanwhile, his approval ratings have fallen to 17 per cent – not quite the 14 per cent of his predecessor François Hollande, the Socialist president who gave him a leg up, only to be betrayed – and calls for his resignation are coming from mainstream figures, not just Marine Le Pen and Mélenchon.
All Macron’s six former PMs now criticise him publicly (most want to run in 2027 and he’s poison; but that’s even the case of the unambitious, such as the now RATP president, Jean Castex). France, the former colonial power, has been kicked out of Africa by the leaderless Wagner group. French debt is higher than ever. Public confidence is so low that after eight years of haranguing the French about “modernity”, they still clamour for the lowering of pension age at 60 and a tax on successful businesses assets. France and the EU have been unable to swing the kind of trade deal Starmer, with all his faults, managed to get from Trump. And the latest to voice his deep disappointment with the way the country is run is Louis Vuitton Dior Moët Hennessy chairman Bernard Arnault, the second richest man in the word, whose brands’ most visible model for the past eight and a half years has been none other than Brigitte Macron.
At this stage her husband isn’t even Louis XVI in 1788: the man with the iPhone on a New York sidewalk evokes the princesse de Lamballe, Marie-Antoinette’s best friend, even more hated than her, and whose head was triumphantly carried on a pike under the windows of the queen’s prison in 1792.
It was one of those moments that encapsulate an entire relationship: Emmanuel Macron, having delivered a 20-minute speech to the UN General Assembly in which he announced France had recognised a nebulous “State of Palestine”, was standing on Manhattan’s First Avenue, barred from crossing it by an apologetic, smiling New York cop, because of an impending presidential motorcade.
Told for a second time he couldn’t be let through, the French president whipped out his iPhone and called Donald Trump to tell him he was “waiting in the street because everything is closed for you”. (Whatever El Donaldo said, Macron then answered “I know, I will follow”.) By that time aware he was being filmed, Macron brought the short conversation back to a more official level: “But you know, I would love if we can have a short discussion with Qatar on the situation in Gaza…”
“All political careers end in failure” said Ronald Reagan, whose own didn’t. With a year and a half to go, without a parliamentary majority (or indeed more than a caretaker Cabinet) that means he can only constitutionally act on foreign and defence affairs, Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to infuse the remainder of his two-term presidency with relevance led him to his latest diplomatic initiative.
That, after considerable lobbying, he managed to bring Keir Starmer onside, as well as a number of liberal-led countries from Canada and Australia to Portugal or Malta, is comforting him in the delusion that he is snatching the mantle from Jacques Chirac and his FM Dominique de Villepin. Both similarly opposed the Iraq war at the UN in 2003: blanket anti-Americanism used to pay off in French politics.
But the very nature of our countries has changed since. After a couple of years of increasingly violent pro-Gaza marches, 78 per cent of the French (roughly all of those who won’t vote for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-Left France Unbowed) oppose the recognition of Palestine and, unconvinced by Macron’s argument that it is “the only way to isolate Hamas”, fear that it will comfort it instead and may cause “more”, not fewer “terrorist attacks on our soil”. France has pre-emptively declared that all Palestinian “refugees” are entitled to automatic asylum. (A recent initiative to invite some 300 Palestinian students to reputed French universities, all expenses paid, was hastily withdrawn after candidate after candidate was revealed to have posted anti-Semitic tracts on social media, glorifying Adolf Hitler rather than encouraging any kind of two-State solution.) As a legacy-burnishing move, this may not be as successful as Macron believes.
It is, however, typical of a man who spent his presidency lecturing people – from job-seekers to Yellow Vest marchers to farmers to Sorbonne academics to French Jews to professional diplomats – on things he knows less about than they do. (It might help him secure his dream next job, succeeding Ursula von der Leyen or António Guterres, although neither is a done deal). Meanwhile, his approval ratings have fallen to 17 per cent – not quite the 14 per cent of his predecessor François Hollande, the Socialist president who gave him a leg up, only to be betrayed – and calls for his resignation are coming from mainstream figures, not just Marine Le Pen and Mélenchon.
All Macron’s six former PMs now criticise him publicly (most want to run in 2027 and he’s poison; but that’s even the case of the unambitious, such as the now RATP president, Jean Castex). France, the former colonial power, has been kicked out of Africa by the leaderless Wagner group. French debt is higher than ever. Public confidence is so low that after eight years of haranguing the French about “modernity”, they still clamour for the lowering of pension age at 60 and a tax on successful businesses assets. France and the EU have been unable to swing the kind of trade deal Starmer, with all his faults, managed to get from Trump. And the latest to voice his deep disappointment with the way the country is run is Louis Vuitton Dior Moët Hennessy chairman Bernard Arnault, the second richest man in the word, whose brands’ most visible model for the past eight and a half years has been none other than Brigitte Macron.
At this stage her husband isn’t even Louis XVI in 1788: the man with the iPhone on a New York sidewalk evokes the princesse de Lamballe, Marie-Antoinette’s best friend, even more hated than her, and whose head was triumphantly carried on a pike under the windows of the queen’s prison in 1792.