Macron’s Olympic truce has ended

Emmanuel Macron believes that the Paris Olympics have shown the world the “true face of France.” The Games were indeed a success, recovering from the disastrous first day, when saboteurs disabled the rail network and torrential rain turned the opening ceremony into a very damp squib.

Macron must have feared the worst but the weather improved and crowds flocked to the iconic Parisian venues to watch two weeks of glorious sport.

“We don’t want life to get back to normal,” remarked Macron on Monday as he hosted an Olympic reception at the Elysée. He and millions of French might not, but there are many others desperate for life to return to its obstructive and obstreperous normal.

The French far-left left have not appreciated the past two weeks. Far too much flag-waving for their taste. A few of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) MPs did get excited by France’s success in the Games but most stayed silent or bridled at the patriotism. 

“Painful” and “chauvinist,” was how one left-wing MP, Arnaud Saint-Martin, described the television coverage. “Everything is framed according to the expected performances of French athletes,” he raged on X. “The time has come for nationalist regression.”

One of the gold medals that the French left cheered the loudest was won by the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who battered her opponents black and blue en route to winning the welterweight category in Paris. 

According to several left-wing MPs Khelif’s victory was a victory against “fascism,” a fascist being one who questions the wisdom of allowing a boxer who allegedly has XY gender chromosomes typical of a man being allowed to fight biological females.

Another of Mélenchon’s minions, Ersilia Soudais, an MP in the Seine and Marne, accused France of “Islamophobia” because it forbade its Olympians from wearing any religious symbols during the Games. This applied to all religions but Soudais interpreted the ban as singling out Muslims.

Her attitude is indicative of a French left that looks to sow division and discontent in every nook and cranny of life. This extends beyond their own borders. One of Soudais’s LFI colleagues in the National Assembly, Raphael Arnault, was so uninterested in the Olympics that last week he went to England to take part in the counter-demonstrations against the anti-immigration rioters. 

Arnault is a far-left extremist considered so radical by the French security services that he is on their watch-list. You wonder why he was allowed into Britain. If the Labour government in 2009 saw fit to ban Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders from entering Britain, then why not Arnault?

The tragedy for France is that Macron has empowered this rancorous left. His decision to call a snap election was a monumental misjudgement but the coalition he then engineered between his centrists and the left’s Nouveau Front Populaire was an act of sheer madness. He has let the fox into the henhouse. 

Shortly before the Olympics began, Macron indicated in a television interview that a new prime minister would be appointed in the second half of August. Hours before the president appeared before the cameras the Nouveau Front Populaire put forward Lucie Castets for the post. Macron was not receptive to the idea and he has made clear that he will decide his prime minister.

One name that has emerged in recent days is Xavier Bertrand, a dull and consensual figure from the center-right Republicans. Macron is said to look favorably on the fifty-nine-year-old Bertrand, but the left do not. 

Their view is that as they won the most seats in Macron’s snap election they get to choose the PM. Anything else would be undemocratic.

This view was articulated week by Castets, who has been using the Olympic political “truce” — as Macron called it — to try and ingratiate herself with the public. 

The thirty-seven-year-old is as bland as Bertrand. She is an unelected technocrat from the Paris city hall who, like so many of her caste, came through the L’École nationale d’administration and has little originality of thought. She briefly roused the interest of the media class last week when she confirmed she was married to a woman and the parent of a child. Ideologically, Castets is the embodiment of the metropolitan progressive left, quick to label those who diverge from this dogma as “far-right.”

In a letter sent on Monday Castets emphasised her willingness to help lead France out of its political deadlock. The letter was sent to every politician and senator — except those belonging to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.

They may be the largest single party in the National Assembly, and they may have won the popular vote in last month’s election with more than 10 million ballots, but that matters not a jot to Castets. 

The daughter of two psychoanalysts, Castets represents the Parisian elite who despise Le Pen’s voters for reasons that are beyond the political. As the historian Philippe Fabry recently explained to Le Figaro, the ostracization of the National Rally “is no longer ideological, it’s sociological: for the nobility of the Republic, it’s a question of refusing to allow the people to enter their place of life and power.”

This snobbery blinds them to the absurdity of their hypocrisy. So in one interview Castets can declare that she will never work with Le Pen and her party, and in the next whine that the appointment of Bertrand as PM would be undemocratic. 

Life, unfortunately for Emmanuel Macron, is already getting back to normal after the Olympics. They managed to clean up the Seine but sanitizing French politics of its sanctimony is an impossible task.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.