This photo was taken on the Boulevard Saint-Martin in the 10th arrondissement in Paris on 15 April 2022, between the two rounds of the presidential election.
There is an immutable French tradition that, once every five years, Marine Le Pen is allowed out on day release to lose that election to an opponent she will cast as an “insider”, while blithely overlooking the dynastic engine that propels her – but only so far. No matter how much she dilutes her shtick with euphemism, it is obvious that the only people who vote for her are the people who vote for her.
Even if this constituency of the secretly faithful and discreetly bigoted was larger in 2022 than it was in 2017, it wasn’t sufficient to alarm Emmanuel Macron, who got just short of 60% of the ballot in the second round. Le Pen was less hampered than might have been expected by little Éric Zemmour, the excitably immodest rightwing, basely nationalistic, cagily Eurosceptic candidate who attracted the interest of journalists simply because he was a journalist. The public, aware of the advantages bestowed by membership of the EU and equally apprised that cars do not run on sovereignty, was less impressed.
It is improbable that Le Pen was the recipient in the second round of all the votes cast for Zemmour in the first. Many will have gone to the quasi-centrist incumbent in the sure knowledge that le centre n’est ni de la gauche ni de la gauche (the centre ground is neither left nor left), a Mitterrandesque gag that might resonate in Britain from Tony Blair’s years in power.
At the time of elections in France, of all levels, temporary metal billboards with breezeblock feet appear across the country ready to receive candidates’ posters. The chances of their remaining intact are slim. They are pavement palimpsests that exist to be mocked, defaced, continually amended. On the right of the image above, there is a largely torn poster that showed Le Pen wearing the hijab. This was one of several stylistically plausible, aspirantly humorous works that trespassed on the billboards. Their author was Jaëraymie, a street artist in the mononymic Stewy or Banksy mould.
They also showed: Macron in a gilet jaune, his right eye horribly shot out by, presumably, an LBD (a rubber bullet); the stridently socially conservative Valérie Pécresse as a lesbian bride; Zemmour as a Muslim. That of Macron excepted, they are hardly the most savage of images. They are parodic of posters rather than satirical of their subjects.
It’s notable that the eminently caricaturable Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not form part of Jaëraymie’s galère. He, alone, is sanctioned – by his absence. Which gives some indication of the vote “on the street”. Or non-vote.
Both rounds of the elections were characterised by mass abstention born of nihilistic indifference, genuine fears of violent governmental agencies and unjustified fears of rigged ballots: France is not yet a country like Britain whose elections will soon require fair-play invigilators from the People’s Democratic Anti-Tyrannical Autocracy of Equatorial Guinea.
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Jonathan Meades lives in Marseille. He is crowdfunding for his megafiction, Empty Wigs
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