Front Burner - Presidency within far-right’s grasp in France

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

On Sunday, French citizens will go to the polls to choose their next president. They have two choices: incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who is seen by many to have handled crises, like the pandemic, well but has struggled to shake the perception that he is out of touch and elitist. Or, longtime far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has worked hard to reimagine her party, even though many of the core ideas — especially about immigration reform — remain. Some polls have the pair only a few percentage points apart — much closer than when they faced off in 2017. Sarah White, a Paris correspondent for The Financial Times, joins us to discuss why the race is so tight, and what it could mean if Le Pen wins.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Marine Le Pen, the longtime leader of a far-right party which has promoted anti-immigration, anti-Islam, and anti-Semitic views, has never been this close to the French presidency. And to give you an idea of the figures,

tonight President Macron came in at 28% of the vote, Marine Le Pen at 23.3%. On April 24th, after making it through France's first round of elections earlier this month, she'll face off against centrist President Emmanuel Macron, just like she did in 2017. But unlike 2017, some polls are showing her only a few percentage points behind him. A Le Pen win could potentially have major consequences within France, but also across Europe. Today, I'm speaking to Sarah White, a Paris correspondent for the Financial Times, about why this election race is so close and what it could mean if Le Pen won. Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for making the time to speak with us today.

Hi there. So I wanted to spend some time looking at the two frontrunners of this race. And let's start with the incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron. Most of our listeners are somewhat familiar with him, but just give us the basics here. Who is he? What are the key ideas that he stands for? came to power in 2017 was a little bit of a wild card at that stage. You know, he was 39 when he won the election in 2017 and he had a complete sort of out of nowhere rise to prominence. Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron appearing with his wife, celebrating a decisive victory over the far-right's Marine Le Pen, winning by a landslide margin of about 30 points. That was partly due to circumstance as well.

Some of the front runners in the election last time dropped out unexpectedly, or didn't drop out, but were hit by scandals at the time. So the whole panorama at the time shifted in such a way that this kind of upstart who came out of nowhere suddenly was in a position where he could win an election. And he campaigned on this platform where he broke some of the codes that existed in France for decades, where he had this platform of I'm neither from the right nor from the left. And his big platform at the time was very much a pro-business, pro-European push. very much a pro-business, pro-European push. Once he wins in this, you know, landslide victory in 2017, tell me a little bit about how his time in office unraveled. Like the impression that I'm

getting is that within France, there are a lot of people who aren't fans. Like the only time his approval rating was above 50% was his first two months in office. So to put it bluntly, why don't more people in France like him? Yeah. I mean, there's a bit of a weird paradox with Macron because he won the last election. And in fact, you know, the central scenario is that he's on course to win again. He won the most votes in the first round. So people, you know, do vote for him in this country. And actually, when you look at approval ratings, you were mentioning, you know, that he's never been above 50%, or at least not, you know, since the first two months of his presidency. I mean, that's never been the case for any president in

France. So on paper, he shouldn't be that unpopular. What is the case with him, though, is that he's not somebody that people feel indifferent about. Those who don't like him have this very, very strong dislike of him. I mean, part of that is, you know, who he is and what that represents. Before he came to power, he had worked for a time as a banker. And I think in many people's minds, and this is a tag that has stuck with him throughout his presidency, his opponents began calling him the president of the rich. And some of the things that he did when he came to office, you know, that this was part of his pro-business platform and trying to attract investment. But for example, he removed, he got rid of a wealth tax in France, and that really gave ammunition to opponents.

Emmanuel Macron's politics are outrageously unfair. He's like a reverse Robin Hood. He robs the poor and gives to the rich. He made changes to the labour market. He went head-to-head with unions to reform one of the big train operators in this country. Anger's been growing over the president's sweeping reform agenda. For months, rail and public sector workers have staged strikes and protests. Macron says the changes will modernize France. So he did things

that other presidents hadn't really or had struggled to tackle in the past. About a year into his presidency, so in 2018, he was suddenly hit by this big wave of anti-government demonstrations, which I think a lot of people would have heard of, but this was the Gilets Jaunes movement or the Yellow Vests. The Yellow Vests, yeah. Exactly. And so that came about after Macron tried to introduce a fuel tax. President Emmanuel Macron announced he would repeal the tax. But it's too late.

The protests have already morphed into a broader rebellion, now taking aim at him. And then broadened out to become this hodgepodge of various kind of demands and anger against the high cost of living in France. You know, that also brought to light something that's been a recurrent theme of his presidency, is that he's seen by many as governing from on high. Yeah, out of touch.

Yeah, and another thing that happened during that time is some of those demonstrations were pretty violent. We had these scenes of destruction in Paris where people descended on the capital and lots of... On the Champs-Élysées Avenue in Paris, we had a lot of shots smashed, etc. And as a result, in response to that, the police response was pretty brutal as well. It was pretty strong.

So now when you fast forward to this election moment now, where you've got a lot of left-wing voters, for example, who don't know which way to go when you talk to them and ask them are you going to vote for Macron they will bring this up you know they will say I don't know if I can vote for this guy who you know basically under his government um we had these sort of you know this police brutality so that's something that that still comes up a lot I mean I would say there are a couple of things that do work in Macron's favour in this election as well. You've got to remember that we're coming out of two years of the

coronavirus pandemic. And in that time, I mean, he had to deal with this crisis. And he responded by putting together a huge government spending package. And actually, France has come out of that crisis in pretty good shape and tacked on to that you know if you look at surveys now about what people you know hate about him like about him one thing that comes up quite strongly is that people trust him to deal with a crisis Now I want to move on to his main challenger, Marine Le Pen. And I think maybe to understand who she is and where she fits into the world of French politics, we first have to talk about the party she took over from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. And can you tell me a little bit about the national front and what that party looked like under her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. And can you tell me a little bit about the National Front

and what that party looked like under her father? So the National Front was born, was created by Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. It very much revolved around him and his person. You know, he's somebody who's known for his pretty, you know, he's been condemned and justice for, you know, xenophobic, anti-Semitic views. I just said that the gas chambers were a detail of Second World War history, which is clear. I remember at the time, Madam President, I was fined 200,000 euros for damages and interest. It was a pretty radical, far-right party whose main purpose was to campaign against immigration in France.

Local election night and riots in Vitrolles as France's national political establishment was rocked by the news of a National Front victory. With 22% unemployment, what got the Front elected was the pledge to send Moroccans and Tunisians and Algerians home, even if they've already got French citizenship. She has spent years now trying to transform the party as she inherited it, to the extent that she kicked her own father out of the party as she inherited it to the extent that um like her own she kicked her own father out of the party wow she's changed its name in that time so now it's called the national rally or the rassemblement national and she's also i mean she's you know she's still asked about it

today i think there was a radio interview in france today when she was asked you know how are you how are you different from your father? And she uses every opportunity possible to distance herself from that. She has relaxed her stances on several issues, abandoning her opposition to marriage equality and abortion, and minimized Frexit and her anti-Europe agenda. Yeah, though she's still, Marine Le Pen, she's still taken a lot of stances on issues in the past and now that will still be considered far right right like including policies targeting muslims in france yes so that's so so this is coming to the surface again now in this final bit of the campaign it had it had sort of subsided a little bit in recent months because she's done a a job, as it were, of sort of redirecting her messaging.

And she'd campaigned very, very heavily in the last few months on the cost of living in France. With the prices of gas, electricity and fuel, nobody dares to be ironic anymore. As president, I will decrease the VAT on all energy products from 20 to 5.5%. You know, so looking at issues with energy prices rising and, you know, campaigning very hard on how she would cut fuel tax, for example. So she's really focused on other issues and very much not mentioning what I actually call pillars of her manifesto,

which are, you know, many measures to do with immigration, for example, as you mentioned, you know, if you look very much at her program on all her ideas to do with immigration, you know, it still very much places her on the far right. Yeah, it's basically anti-immigration, right? Yes, I mean, at least, you know, what she wants to do is give France the means of curtailing immigration. And that means, for example, changing the constitution. And that's what she wants to do if she came to power in order for France to be able to control its borders from within the EU, which is kind of contrary to the freedom of movement

in the EU, for example. I will bring back France's sovereignty in all areas, which means the freedom for the French people to decide for themselves and defend their interests. I will control immigration and reestablish security for all. And in the last days of this campaign, there are sort of proposals that she's put forward that people are starting to pinpoint her more on. And one of them, for example, is that she wants to ban the wearing of the veil in public spaces. So in France, women cannot wear the headscarf in schools. But outside of

that, you know, in the street or wherever, you know, women can wear a headscarf and she wants to ban that. Right. And I know she's been charged twice and subsequently acquitted of hate speech. Le Pen, who heads up France's National Front Party, made comments comparing praying Muslims to Nazi occupiers. So we talked about how in 2017, she got through the first round of elections in France. She went up against Macron. He beat her by a long shot.

I think it was 66% to 34%. But now, of course, as we talked about, the polls are way tighter. Why do you think that she's doing so well this time around? You mentioned that she's been focusing a lot on cost of living. Yeah, so she's really changed her campaign style from five years ago. If you think five years ago, she was campaigning on France leaving the EU. That was one of her big measures.

And I think it really set up a kind of sort of EU referendum between her and Macron. And we're nowhere near that scenario now. She's completely backed away from that. She's dropped that entirely. She's worked a lot on her image as well. You know, people have commented on this quite a lot, that she's managed to portray herself as this kind of friendly cat lady by publicly discussing her single mother status

and love of breeding cats le pen has further transformed public perception as more accessible and soft something her political opponents but she's been quite clever in the way that she's done that she's been on all these tv chat shows where she's good at it, you know, she'll crack a joke and people will ask her about her cats and she'll joke about that, you know, going town by town, talking to people about their kind of daily issues and the cost of food and, you know, their daily struggles and that's really worked for her. You've also got to roll back, you know, you've got to rewind a few months, so you had another far-right challenger this time in the election who was not there five years ago. And this is a guy called Eric Zemmour.

Polemysis, ponder, makes the Le Pens look soft. His best-selling book is called The French Suicide. The message, a version of great replacement theory that the French way of life is under siege from its growing Muslim population. And he campaigned on a pure anti-immigration platform that's even more radical than Le Pen's. I mean, for him, you know, he had this platform of zero immigration in France. And that kind of had this effect of centralizing Le Pen more. So by comparison, he looked a lot more extreme and it made her a much more palatable option to people who in the past would have said,

I would never vote for Le Pen. In the Dragon's Den, I'm going to go. Entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To

listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. We already talked about how Macron isn't popular with younger, more progressive voters. How much of a risk do you think is it that these voters might feel disenfranchised enough that they'll sit this one out, that it could tip the scales, possibly in Le Pen's favor? I mean, I think it is one of the big issues of this election. And it's a problem for both of them. They both need people to come out. The particular risk for Macron is that he came first in the first round, but he pretty much tapped out all the support on the sort of centre-right

that he could possibly get. And so there's not a lot, you know, I think a lot of those people already went, sort of migrated towards Macron, so there's not a lot he can get there. And he needs those left wing voters to come out for him. And a lot of them are saying they're on the fence, which if they do vote blank next Sunday or massively abstain in a big, big way that potentially is a real, you know, could take the cells in this election and is potentially a problem. I mean, there's a couple of things that he's doing now to try and remedy that.

So in the last few days, we've seen him campaigning a lot on green issues. He said he's going to try and do more on reducing emissions in France. But yes, I mean, both of them are really battling that. And it's been an issue of this election that a lot of people feel like they don't feel reflected I mean, both of them are really battling that. And it's been an issue of this election that, you know, a lot of people feel like they don't feel reflected

in either of these choices that they've been given. And one of the feelings of resentment about voting for Macron is that it feels like it's a bit of, you know, you speak to people on the street who say, well, it's a forced, you know, I'm forced to go and vote for him. And I don't want to feel forced to vote for him. And people are feeling a little bit tired of being told you know come and do your duty to to block the far right inside France obviously many people have expressed a lot of concern about the possibility of Le Pen winning, including, of course, as we talked about, many French Muslims and also immigrants and the children of immigrants.

But I wonder if we could zoom out a bit more now outside of France. more now outside of France. And I know we talked about how she backed off from this kind of Brexit stance, but in the event that she were to win, what could a Le Pen victory mean for Europe? I mean, it would be pretty consequential for Europe if she won. She essentially doesn't want to take France out of the EU, but some of the things that she proposes are not necessarily compatible with being within the EU. A lot of that has to do with her policies on immigration. So there's a lot of worry about, you know,

would this be a sort of defector, eventually some form of frexit as it's called but beyond that there's more there's more immediate issues as well i mean you know the whole of the eu at the moment is trying to coordinate on a response to russia's invasion of ukraine so both in terms of diplomacy and diplomatic efforts but also in terms of you know how the eu is going to deal with the economic fallout from that. And France, Macron has been a huge, you know, has been a major player in those discussions. And she's been criticised for being close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past.

Obviously, since the start of the war with Ukraine, she's distanced herself from that and come out saying that obviously she does not approve of his actions in Ukraine. from that and come out saying that obviously she does not approve of his actions in Ukraine. But she has also said that if things change and the situation evolves, potentially she saw a way that France could renew relations with Russia. And that's a pretty different stance from what you're seeing other international and EU leaders saying. So there's a lot of worry about, well, even if she's within the EU and she's not seeing eye to eye with other European nations on this response. I mean, you know, even immediately that's going to change the course of EU policy and is going to have huge ramifications. Final question before we go. We've seen a number of far-right nationalist leaders come to power in Eastern Europe over the years. But what do you think it would say if there was a far-right leader in France, one of the most powerful countries in Western Europe?

one of the most powerful countries in Western Europe. I mean, I think it would certainly give impetus to other countries where we have seen, you know, similar either far-right or populist leaders come to power. And, you know, you would have an alignment then between Le Pen and France and countries such as Hungary and Poland. You know, for example, Le Pen has said in her manifesto that she would want French national law to have primacy over EU law.

And that's something, you know, these are issues that have arisen in Poland, for example. So I think you'd end up with a pretty divided Europe to have a country like France, which is so core to the EU, aligned on many, many issues with countries that have been in a bit more of a minority position until now. You know, it probably would create this kind of two blocks within Europe with the backing of, you know, one of the biggest economies. Yeah. So certainly it would lend more weight to those views and increase this divide. Right. Right. Sarah, thank you so much for this. This was really fascinating and really appreciate your time. No worries. Cheers. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you tomorrow.