Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold

(3 minutes read)

On 9 January, President Macron nominated 35-year-old Gabriel Attal to become France’s 25th (and youngest) Fifth Republic Prime Minister. Within a week Le Pen’s party leader, Jordan Bardella, mouthily challenged Attal to a debate: ‘The European Elections’ said Bardella ‘should be a great moment for democracy, enabling debates on the challenges facing the country’.

Attal dismissed Bardella’s barefaced attempt to win further limelight. He, Attal, wasn’t a candidate in the Euro-Elections. So why debate with the leader of National Rally’s candidates?

Yet, soon after, The Great Farmers’ Revolt forced Attal to review the situation. By mid-February, with Le Pen’s party helpfully stirring les agriculteurs‘ anger, Attal announced he wanted to debate ‘Agriculture’ with Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen dismissed Attal’s invitation out of hand, suggesting he debate Bardella instead. The unspoken implication? She’d only debate with Macron.

So it came to pass, two days ago, that wunderkind Prime Minister Attal – after being publicly, humiliatingly told by He Who Must Be Obeyed to involve himself in the campaign – debated ‘Europe’ prime-time on France 2 TV with 28-year-old Bardella.

Around April, the impact of nominating the unknown, and largely uncared-for, Valérie Qui as the leader of Macron’s party list hit the national consciousness. Since then, opinion polls have consistently shown Macron’s party list receiving support around half that of Bardella’s ultra-Right.

It was, therefore, an unfortunate coincidence of timing that Ifop‘s latest rolling poll (one-third of those polled are new respondents each day) was published three hours ahead of the debate.

That poll showed Bardella’s ultra-Right list had attained hitherto unassailed heights: 33% support. [That, incidentally, puts the total Ultra-Right/sovereignist/populist support at an equally-unheard-of FORTY ONE PER CENT.]

Ifop found Macron’s list still marooned at 16%, with the Socialists (back from their (near-)Death experience) well within the margin of error at 15%. [Other polls put the Socialists a further one point below.]

Debate hour

Were debating points to be awarded (and then, more importantly, rewarded in the polls) the respective positions of National Rally and Macron’s Presidential Minority, after Thursday evening’s 70-minute joust, would be instantly reversed.

Bardella was uncommonly grouchy. Not at all himself. A lamentable performance (possibly worsened by what appeared to be cold sores on his lips). Attal? He could hardly have impressed more: confident, aware, intelligent, smart, super-combative.

Even so, all too often the two endlessly spoke over each other, with France 2‘s journalist-moderator unable to restore order.

Occasionally the producer gave us an odd birds-eye view. Had France 2 hired a mini-overhead-drone whose existence needed justification? This view, directly above the hubbub, looked down onto three heads. Utterly pointless ‘theatre’ made more idiotic by superimposing the two protagonists on the bottom of the screen.

It did, however, reveal (we know-alls had long since guessed) that SuperAttal had not one single note or paper in front of him. The perfect product of his perfect education: everything is in that memory.

Bardella, par contre, had aide-memoires galore spread out in two piles. They’d sometimes be referred to when he needed a tedious quotation verbatim. He would also occasionally look semi-askance at his crib sheets, without doing so too overtly. In addition there were some foolish attempts at ‘sarcastic debate humour’, referring to ‘a really tiny insignificant European country … called Germany’. Not good.

It was a replay of the Macron – Le Pen debates. The Crushing Of Le Pen, ahead of 2017’s Presidential Election, came to mind. One person wholly in command of their brief and every relevant fact, the other visibly lost.

Unfortunately for Attal (and, more importantly, for His Boss) the stakes in this debate, and in the Euro-Elections, are much more of a free hit. Make a gesture without, as most see it, real-world consequences. How many care about France’s representatives in the Euro-Parliament? One in 20? Probably way below that.

It’s almost a no-brainer.

Macron will get the electoral kicking so many feel (not without quite some justification) he merits.

Bardella summed up his unsubtle line of attack by inviting people to vote against ‘Macron’s Europe which for seven years has reduced the purchasing power of everyone in France through increased energy prices, imposing floods of immigrants … and unfair competition’. The latter accusation (which initially emerged during The Great Farmers’ Revolt) has cut through. So many complain about the price of Spanish and Italian fruit and vegetables, claiming it’s down to their not respecting rules which apply in France.

But there’s Nul Points for Attal’s debating skills.

On top of that, 85% say their minds are made up as to how they’ll vote on 9 June.

So t’was all for naught.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The drubbing Bardella received will go very largely unnoticed.

Attal laid into Bardella on the National Rally’s crazed idea that all ‘public procurement’ should be subject to a ‘national priority’ ie Buy French requirement. Do that, said Attal, and every other EU country will retaliate by introducing equivalent national laws. Citing several major contracts French firms had won around the EU, Attal pressed a sad-faced Bardella into sort-of-accepting such contracts mightn’t have been won if EU Law permitted National Priority Procurement.

Then Attal produced attacks on Marine Le Pen’s multiple policy changes: ‘You used to favour leaving the Euro, but now you say you want to remain. You previously wanted to leave the EU, but now apparently you say you want to stay. When were you lying? Was it before, or is it now?’

Later, there were jibes about Russian loans which Le Pen’s party took, and Bardella’s personal failure to vote for a Euro-Parliament resolution supporting Alexei Navalny, then in a Russian gaol.

But what was the point? Debating points galore. But no-one cared. No-one was listening, Mr Attal. All fell on firmly blocked ears … or people were watching other channels.

Even the relatively meagre 3.6 million debate audience won’t (for the most part) have been much moved. And putting that viewing figure in context, note that while the Attal-Bardella debate was in its earliest, most combative moments, 5 million were watching the regular 8pm news over on TF1.

The regional newspapers? They certainly didn’t ‘Hold The Front Page’, treating the ‘event’ with greater disinterest than the punters. Of sixty or so regional newspapers, only Midi Libre felt the debate deserved their front page, with the two combatants pictured under the heading ‘Blow for blow’.

Annoyingly for every Town Hall …

… just when they thought it was safe to put out a notice board for each of the 37 lists of Euro-candidates … a 38th list of ex-gilets jaunes comrades (let’s leave the EU and set up a democratic council comprising 12 citizens drawn by lot which will jointly run the country) received late approval. (Another National Record !).