Bill Carmichael: Anti-EU mood shapes future of France

Establishment smoothie, and hot favourite in Sunday’s run-off election, Emmanuel Macron traded colourful Gallic insults with populist challenger Marine Le Pen for more than two hours in a televised confrontation watched by more than 20 million French viewers.

What an entertaining barny! I haven’t seen two people go at each other like that since I witnessed a drunken row in a shady bar in the Pigalle a few years back.

But one comment from Le Pen hit the bull’s eye like no other. Regardless of Sunday’s result, she said: “France will be led by a woman – either Madam Merkel or me.”

Zing!

Nothing quite hurts like the truth, does it? Poor Macron looked like he’d just swallowed a particularly dodgy escargot.

In return Macron accused Le Pen of lying and spreading hatred. Probably his best line was when he described his opponent as “the high priestess of fear”.

A poll among French voters after the debate gave Macron the edge, but for me Le Pen had the best lines.

She accused Macron of planning to close factories and hospitals, adding: “The only thing you don’t want to close is the borders.”

She said: “People will say I am old fashioned but I like France as it is, with its culture, language and borders.” I expect that one will play well outside the metropolitan bubble of the big cities.

She hit the mark on the EU: “I am European. I want to save Europe. I want to wrench Europe from the hands of the EU, which is wrecking it.”

Macron’s problem is that despite his attempts to appear to be a fresh face – even to the extent of founding his own political party – he is an establishment figure down to his manicured fingertips.

A product of the ultra-posh Sciences Po and the elite National School of Administration, one of the France’s prestigious grandes écoles, Macron is a former investment banker who has never been elected to anything.

He also served as an Economy Minister in Francois Hollande’s disastrous socialist government that has reduced France to the sick man of Europe (sadly, thanks to the euro, one of many).

Critics point out gleefully that if he is so full of bright ideas, why didn’t he act on them when he was in power?

Le Pen is nowhere near as polished, but she is a formidable character. If she were behind the bar when you popped in for a quick livener after a day’s sightseeing, you would certainly think twice before putting your feet on the seats.

She has worked hard to distance herself from the influence of her father and party founder, Jean-Marie, who was accused of anti-Semitism during his time as leader.

Whether this week’s debate will have any influence on the result on Sunday is moot. Macron is about 20 points ahead in the polls and they would have to be spectacularly wrong for Le Pen to snatch victory.

But in some ways it doesn’t matter – because the anti-establishment, anti-EU direction of travel is now firmly established.

For the foreseeable future the political debate, as it was with Brexit, is framed between the entrenched establishment elite that has failed Europe so miserably, against a popular insurgency that seeks to restore representative democracy to nation states.

So powerful is this narrative that Macron, previously a pro-EU fanatic, felt forced to re-invent himself as something of a Eurosceptic to shore up his support.

At the weekend he warned that the EU must reform itself or face the prospect of “Frexit”.

He said: “We have to listen to our people and to listen to the fact that they are extremely angry today, impatient and the dysfunction of the EU is no more sustainable.”

It sounds very Cameroonian – but as David Cameron discovered to his cost, the EU is institutionally incapable of reforming itself.

Macron said if the EU continued with a “business as usual attitude” after the election the French would see it as a “betrayal”.

That, I suspect, is exactly what will happen if Macron wins, as expected.

And win or lose, Marine Le Pen, and the growing dissatisfaction with the EU among ordinary people throughout the continent, isn’t going to go away.