Try as he might Emmanuel Macron and his party are unable to arrest the popularity of the National Rally. A month out from the European elections, the latest poll has their principal candidate, Jordan Bardella, on thirty-two points, double the score of Macron’s representative, Valerie Hayer.
The latest head of state with dubious ethics to be courted by Macron is Xi Jinping
Hayer and Bardella have clashed twice in recent days in live television debates, and on both occasions Hayer has condemned as “shameful” the National Rally’s benevolence towards Vladimir Putin in the years leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That this strategy doesn’t appear to be working for the presidential camp is not a surprise. As Bardella has pointed out, the National Rally wasn’t the only party to have made eyes at Putin in the last decade; Macron wined and dined Putin at Versailles in May 2017, just weeks after being elected president.
It is a challenge for Macron to play the arbiter of morality when he was the first western leader to welcome Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman back into the fold after his implication in the murder of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
There is also Macron’s enthusiasm for Qatar — with whom he recently signed a $11 billion trade deal — and his satisfaction at the election victory last year of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey’s presidential election. Qatar and Erdoğan are both supporters of Hamas, responsible for the murder last October of dozens of French citizens when they attacked Israel.
The latest head of state with dubious ethics to be courted by Macron is Xi Jinping, who arrived in France on Monday on a state visit. Human rights groups do not approve of the presence of Xi. Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch called on Macron to “make it clear to Xi Jinping that Beijing’s crimes against humanity come with consequences for China’s relations with France,”a reference to the oppression of China’s Uighur Muslim minority.
In a radio interview on Monday, Valerie Hayer described China’s treatment of the Uighurs as a “genocide”: it was a bold criticism from Hayer but one that surely will undermine any future attempt on her part to attack Bardella. How can she accuse him of cozying up to one dictator when her own president is dishing out gifts to a president she has accused of genocide?
One of the gifts Macron gave Xi on Monday was an 1861 edition of Contemplations by Victor Hugo. “I know that you are very fond of Victor Hugo, and you have often paid tribute to him,” said Macron as he handed the present to the Chinese president.
You would like to think Macron was being ironic, though he probably wasn’t. Hugo was a fierce defender of free speech, declaring in an address to the National Assembly in 1848 about the muzzling of French newspapers that “Censorship and confiscation are two monstrous abuses.”
At the same time as Macron and Xi were exchanging gifts, France’s press freedom body, Reporters Without Borders, were driving a truck through central Paris with the names of 119 journalists it claims are in detention in China. They called Xi “one of the great predators of press freedom.”
At Monday’s State Banquet, Xi toasted the “special” friendship that exists between China and France and he hailed the “fine tradition of mutual appreciation and mutual attraction.”
Rather awkwardly for Xi and Macron, hours before the banquet, Francois-Xavier Bellamy, the center-right Republican candidate in the European elections filed a legal complaint alleging that he has been the victim of a recent cyber attack linked to Beijing. “At a time when Chinese president Xi Jinping is embarking on a state visit to Paris, we have the feeling that we have not appreciated is at stake today in terms of foreign interference,” said Bellamy.
Similar accusations of hacking are disclosed in today’s British media — a fortnight after police charged two Britons with spying for China. According to Sky News, China has hacked the ministry of defense, accessing a payroll system. Tory Member of Parliament Tobias Ellwood said that China may have wanted to target “the financially vulnerable with a view that they may be coerced in exchange for cash.”
Today Macron and Xi, and their wives, will visit the Pyrenees in the far south of France. The French press report that in between showing his guest the sights their president will hold private talks with Xi during which he will urge him to use his influence with Putin to halt the war in Ukraine. Global trade rules are also on Macron’s agenda.
That is Macron’s justification for hosting the Chinese president. Will his realpolitik pay dividends? The French press are skeptical. Increasingly these days, the only person who takes Emmanuel Macron seriously is Emmanuel Macron.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
