Emmanuel Macron is out to do a “relooking”. In the Wall Street English version of modern French that the President loves to prove he is fluent in, it means to adopt a new hair style, to repaint your kitchen or, in his case, to offer in a tone of fake seriousness during his fourth national TV address of the epidemic, a slogan that he has tried to tart up a bit: France’s “after Covid” needs to be a time when the economy is “strong, green, sovereign and one of solidarity”.
It was a real iron fist in a velvet glove: no increase in taxes on the rich or on companies, many of them bulging with cash, but watch out you on the shopfloor as “our country is going to experience multiple bankruptcies and workforce reduction plans” and all need to “work more”.
Five hundred billion Euros had been pumped into the economy, he reminded his Sunday evening viewers. But for the health services that had been the front defence against the virus? Talks had begun with all concerned, staff would see their jobs “revalued” and there would be “new investments”. That politician’s promise has been on the table for over two months now. As I said, a “relooking”.
