Why the French presidential election should matter to Britain

Next week sees what the French call la rentrée – the return – when French schools re-open, the July and August holidays fade, and the political season blossoms again. From now until April the only political story there will be is who is going to be the next President of France.

After Biden ’ s despatch of Trump and the imminent arrival next month of a pragmatic continuity coalition government in Germany (even if not headed by a Christian Democratic Chancellor ), the choice of the next French President is a vital question . It is vital for Europe, for Brexit Britain, and for the new geopolitics now painfully being born, after the failure of early 21st-century military interventions by the democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

France remains a permanent member of the UN security council and, with Britain, France is Europe’s only nuclear power. For geopolitics it is by far the most important European Union nation state. EU foreign policy only happens if France says it can. It is also Britain’s closest neighbour. All the problem areas of Brexit – from delays at borders, for goods, travel and working in Europe, to handling fishing communities, or the hopes and fears that some of the City of London’s business may move to EU capitals – are driven by Paris and by the powerful network of highly-trained French officials in Brussels.

So far this year, the English political and media elites have treated France with a mixture of disdain and contempt, most notably over the slow start to the vaccination programme. There have been glib put-downs of President Macron’s concept of “strategic autonomy” for Europe.

Yet France has now overtaken Britain in vaccination numbers. As President Biden treats Boris Johnson with the same lack of regard that President Eisenhower had for Anthony Eden at the time of Suez, even the most loyal of Tories and other Brexit supporters are worried at the stark absence of friends or influence that “Global Britain” now turns out to have. Whoever is the next President of France, a sensible UK government will seek to restore at least the civilities of being a good neighbour.

It is too early to proclaim Macron, or Marine Le Pen, or Michel Barnier or any of the seven possible candidates for the election next spring, as the winner. The contest takes place at the end of April and beginning of May, with a gap of a fortnight between the two rounds. Both are necessary unless one candidate wins an absolute majority in the first round.

I wrote the first biography in English of François Mitterrand in 1982, as no-one in the Anglo-Saxon world seemed to have much idea of who the new socialist president was. There is a fine biography of Macron by the Economist’s Paris bureau chief, Sophie Pedder, but overall reporting of France in the UK media is thin and often highly partisan.

I have just spent 10 days in different parts of la France profonde (deep France, far from Paris) and asked many people about the next president. The short answer is: they don’t know. Everyone in Britain knew Tony Blair would win all three of his elections and everyone knew that Jeremy Corbyn would not win either of his.

Those certitudes are not on offer – yet – in France. France’s top political scientist is Pierre Rosanvallon. His equivalent here might be the pollster, Sir John Curtice. Rosanvallon doesn’t crunch numbers, but in a very French sociological manner seeks to read the deeper undercurrents that have moved politics in France since General de Gaulle left power more than 50 years ago.

In a new study, Les Epreuves de la Vie (roughly “Life’s Trials”), Rosanvallon says the new politics is about listening to fears and uncertainties, about channelling and representing emotions – not rational,technocratic, one-national-size-fits-all state management. This at first sight may seem bad news for that ultimate French rationalist, Emmanuel Macron. even though the French president described Pierre Rosanvallon as one of his mentors during his bid for power in 2016-17.

But the more emotionalist candidates – the anti-immigrant, anti-EU Marine Le Pen, or the Corbynesque Jean-Luc Mélenchon, or the always angry Greens – are not yet breaking through. Nor are the leftover representatives of the traditional Right, former ministers in governments headed by Presidents Sarkozy and Chirac.

The socialist Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, will carry the flame of Mitterrand’s once-mighty Socialist Party. Her father was manager of the French World Cup soccer team in the 1970s, but never won the trophy.

None of these candidates, other than the incumbent Macron and Marine Le Pen, are fully and formally endorsed as candidates. About 15 years ago French politics fell in love with primaries – letting all the rank and file party members, plus anyone who paid a modest sum, choose the candidate.

Here, Labour and the Tories went down the same road, producing Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson as the choice of the parties’ ardent true believers. Now the French parties are dumping primaries and trying to find other mechanisms to select a candidate who can take on Macron. The one exception are the Greens. They have invited anyone who can pay three euros to help choose their candidate for President. It seems a cheap offer, but out of 50 million French voters only 20,000 have taken up the Green invitation. So we will have to wait a little to see which candidates are fully endorsed by the major parties.

Brexit Britain has been what the French call nombriliste since June 2016 – navel-gazing, self-obsessed and indifferent to the rest of the world. No matter one’s views on Brexit or on the qualities of British political leaders, Britain is always stronger when it bothers to study and learn about the politics of its neighbours and big countries in the world.

The French election would be a good moment to return to understanding the politics of the nations that will shape our future. I shall be writing here on TheArticle about an election that will give the world one of its most important leaders. We must hope that people here are paying attention, in Westminster and beyond.

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