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August 27, 2021 - 3:00pm
Michel Barnier has an enormously high political profile. He is much admired by half the country for his work as the EU’s Brexit negotiator.
Unfortunately for him, the country where he is widely known and admired (but also detested) is not France. It is Britain.
Yesterday, as long expected, Barnier declared that he was a candidate in the French presidential elections next April. Properly speaking, he announced that he would be a candidate in a possible centre-Right primary which may happen in October or November but has not yet been agreed or organised.
His chances of winning such a primary — and fighting in the elections proper — are nil. Barnier, a decent, competent man but largely unknown in France, would have more chance of making electoral headway in the UK.
His status as the chief Brexit negotiator for Brussels for four years made him one of the best-known and most-discussed figures in British politics. But on the other side of the Channel, he has had no role in domestic French politics since the end of Sarkozy presidency nine years ago. He has never had any particular following in France; he is 70 years old.
On the website of the main centre-Right newspaper, Le Figaro this morning, Barnier has a long interview. It is given less prominence than a story reporting that another centre-Right baron — Laurent Wauquiez, president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, will not run in a centre-Right primary (if it happens).
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SubscribeI’ve assumed that the main role of Barnier, with all his though on immigration talk, is to syphon votes away from Le Pen to the benefit of Macron.
I would tend to agree with you on this as Le Pen is still a real threat. Mind you things do change before the final vote is cast.
The ways of the French are strange.
Too Germanic.
French goings-on are très bizarre, I must say, …. sounds better.
I’ve watched ‘Allo ‘Allo, you know. Too many times.
Aren’t the British ones not as strange, seen from the other side of the Channel ?
I was being a little tongue in cheek, Jacques. No offence was meant.
It’s still surprising, at least to me, that Barnier even bothers to run. His lead role in the Brexit negotiations suggests he’s very much a realist and pragmatist. I would have thought he could assess his own electoral chances with a keen and cynical gaze.
On the other hand, as the author notes, he’s seventy. His career is behind him. Perhaps he feels his life is almost over. So he doesn’t have much to lose by running in the first round of elections. It might, as Billy Bunter would say, be a jolly wheeze.
We’ve got Billy Bunter as our Prime Minister
No. He’s really not.