Benjamin Morel is a lecturer in public law at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas.
FIGAROVOX. - While the anti-health pass demonstrations are running out of steam, would you say that Emmanuel Macron has won his bet on the management of the crisis?
Benjamin MOREL. -
The crisis may not be over ... but at this stage yes, for two reasons.
The first is that he has managed to give the feeling of a polarization between himself and the anti-vaccines. The oppositions were handicapped in this battle by the summer agenda and an electorate more split than that of the head of state. They therefore tried to adopt an ambiguous position (favorable to vaccination for the PS, discussing the modalities for LR), inaudible in a period of exacerbated cleavage. However, in the last Odoxa poll of September 2, 67% of French people are in favor of the health pass, which obviously benefits Emmanuel Macron.
The other reason relates to a perception of crisis management. The successive waves have called into question the idea that there would be counter models. Already in an Elabe survey of November 5, 2020, 58% of French people believed that Germany had managed the crisis neither better nor worse. The opposition has put a lot of emphasis on its local elected representatives. However, after the latter had paraded behind Didier Raoult or taken sometimes caricatured postures, the comparison rather benefited the government considered more coherent and reliable. The idea was imposed that the oppositions would not have done better, or even, would have done less well. This is particularly the case in the Social Democratic and LR electorate. The candidates who in this space, trying to capitalize on the failures of crisis management,put in the same bag Emmanuel Macron, the government and the State, are one year behind opinion.
Read alsoHow Emmanuel Macron is preparing his presidential campaign
Marine Le Pen has just launched his campaign on freedoms, a theme dear to Emmanuel Macron: what themes will he be able to confront him with?
Launching a campaign on the theme of freedom, followed by a long interview yesterday in your newspaper, shows that Marine Le Pen aims above all to conquer the electorate of the right LR.
In this, Emmanuel Macron is not his competitor, but his partner.
Both must cleave on mirror themes.
Both fear the emergence of a dynamic right-wing candidacy.
Marine le Pen thus takes up the idea of a polarization between “nationals” and “globalists”.
It is a way of inviting LR voters to choose their side.
It can work, because the terrain is favorable.
The French presidency of the Union can be an important moment when Emmanuel Macron wants to make it his launching pad and an IFOP poll for the Echoes of July 1 showed that 57% of the French demand that the government "clearly support the 'goal of less Europe'.
Moreover, if the LR electorate is able to rally to the panache of a leader, the confusion that remains on the right may make him want to vote useful Macron or Le Pen.
The French see Emmanuel Macron as a head of state in crisis, plus a young reformist premier.
Benjamin Morel
Emmanuel Macron is trying to reopen the thorny issue of pension reform ... Is he playing on his reform credibility?
First of all, it should be understood that there is no macronist political identity. That is to say that the voters of Emmanuel Macron did not vote by attachment to a history and to symbols (socialism, Gaullism ...). What makes the Macronist mysticism is, on the one hand, the idea of a program worth a contract with those who elected it, on the other a reforming desire qualified by this electorate as pragmatism. Emmanuel Macron has never lost sight of it, to such an extent that reforms in the pipes since the start of the five-year term have sometimes been ripolined to be presented as responses to the yellow vests or the post-Covid.
Still, the situation is no longer the same. The French see Emmanuel Macron as a head of state in crisis, plus a young reformist premier. The country is today primarily in search of protection and stability after five years of permanent crisis. If he does not understand it, he risks fracturing the very heart of his electorate.