France, Macron's party collapses in the polls and attacks the left: it would take us out of the EU

The approval rating of Emmanuel Macron drops to its lowest point. Amidst the flurry of news about electoral alliances on the right and left that are not yet picked up by opinion polls, the only sticking point seems to be the president's approval rating, which is falling again.

An Elabe survey for Les Échos shows that only 24% of French people trust the president, a level very close to the low of 23% recorded in December 2018, during the Gilets Jaunes demonstrations. Among his voters, trust remains high, at 71%, but among the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical left of La France Insoumise, it drops to 17% (from 22%) and among those of the Rassemblement national, it drops to 6%, from 12%. Among the French people's favourite personalities, Edouard Philippe, former prime minister and leader of Horizons, a political force in the presidential camp, is confirmed in first place with 42%, followed by Jordan Bardella at 38%, Marine Le Pen (33%, down from 35% a month ago) and Raphael Glucksmann of Force Publique-Parti socialiste, who rises rapidly from 22% to 30%.

On the other hand, there is no movement in the polls, which are stationary at 12 June. The Rassemblement national remains around 32-34%, followed by the Nouveau Front Populaire at 25-28% and Ensemble, the Macronian coalition, at 17-19%. Many things could change, however, once the line-ups are clarified (nominations are to be finalised on Monday). The Front Populaire - communists, socialists, greens, insoumis - has announced its programme and gained the support of Glucksmann, who had remained on the sidelines: a sign, most likely, that Mélenchon will not be the prime ministerial candidate, not yet revealed. Even some Macronians, and among them the president of the Assemblée nationale Yaël Braun-Pivet, have already given an indication that they will vote for the Front in the second round in the event that Ensemble does not participate in the runoff and the leftist candidate is not an Insoumi.

Very polemical on the other hand is Economy Minister Bruno le Maire, according to whom the Front's programme is 'the guarantee of exit from the European Union'. Measures such as the indexation of wages and pensions, the (counter)reform of the social security system, the repeal of the unemployment benefit reform, the price freeze on essential goods, and the reintroduction of the solidarity tax on fortunes seem, however, to be functional - as the numbers dictate - for the creation of an important opposition force, certainly not a governmental force. Importantly, however, in terms of foreign policy - which remains the president's prerogative - the full support for Ukraine and the condemnation of Hamas, points on which some political forces had remained ambiguous.

Less radical, not surprisingly, is Bardella's programme, who has promised as his first measure the abolition of ius soli, while on pensions - after having long fought against raising the reference retirement age to 64 - he intends to intervene only for long working careers. On the Olympics, the Rn candidate promised not to touch the security apparatus, triggering the irony of the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin: 'For the security of the French, it is better that you do nothing. Your inexperience and radicalism will only endanger the French and the policemen'. Bardella also remains evasive on foreign policy issues.