Macron ponders his de Gaulle moment with Brexit

I think this man has gone crazy — absolutely crazy,” the British prime minister said of the French president. “He is inventing any means whatever to knock us out and the simple thing is he wants to be the cock on a small dunghill instead of having two cocks on a larger one.”

The year was 1963 and Harold Macmillan was venting his frustrations on a call to the White House. Within weeks Gen Charles de Gaulle of France had vetoed Britain’s bid to join the European Economic Community — the first of the two occasions on which he said “Non” to the British — blindsiding his five fellow leaders in the club.

Half a century later, Britain is seeking to leave the EU at a time of its choosing, and once again finds its European destiny beholden to the calculations of a charismatic French leader— a president who sees de Gaulle as his role model.

De Gaulle said No to the UK’s entry. Will French President Emmanuel Macron have a de Gaulle moment, say No to the UK leaving when it wants, and bundle the British out of the door?

Mr Macron has certainly taken the hardest line in public against a long delay to a UK exit date, first scheduled for March 29, postponed to April 12, and which UK prime minister Theresa May now wants to delay until June 30. Even in private he has told other EU leaders that it may be best to get Brexit over with rather than let Westminster hold the other 27 member states hostage.

But senior officials and diplomats in Paris, Brussels and other European capitals doubt that Mr Macron will stand alone against more emollient EU leaders in countries such as Germany, Poland and Ireland and be the one to finally pull the plug on the British.

Mr Macron’s overtly hard line is seen partly as a traditional piece of Gaullist grandstanding in the centuries-old tradition of Anglo-French rivalry. “It is part of the job description for every French president to humiliate the Brits,” says one senior EU official.

Nor are the French afraid to take the lead in such negotiations. “We are a little bit British in this — we are not afraid to be alone,” says one senior French official.

Yet the French stand is also seen as good diplomacy and good politics, because Mr Macron wants to put pressure on the British so that Mrs May does not come yet again to Brussels without a plausible plan to justify an extension — whether it be a Brexit plan that wins the support of the House of Commons, or an agreement for a second referendum.

“Our nightmare is if she comes with nothing in her pocket,” says the French official.

An outright rejection of the UK request would also badly damage EU unity, which has been carefully nurtured through the Brexit process.

Mr Macron would need to publicly overrule the Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who wants more time to avoid the inevitable economic and political disruption from a no-deal exit, including threats to peace in Northern Ireland. Mr Macron met Mr Varadkar at the Elysée palace last week and said he would “never abandon Ireland or the Irish people, no matter what”.

With his “Jupiterian” view of the French presidency and his championing of the EU, Mr Macron has cast himself as a worthy successor to the man who so appalled Macmillan — “a sort of modern-day de Gaulle, who will rescue Europe from its demons, and conjure hope from crisis”, in the words of his biographer Sophie Pedder.

Mr Macron likes to quote de Gaulle, and as soon as he took office in 2017 he chose to place a copy of the general’s memoirs in the background for his official photographic portrait.

“It is a very political. He will be tempted,” says one person who has spoken to Mr Macron about the Brexit extension request. “We cannot exclude that the political context leads him to veto. If the UK cannot provide justification for a long extension, then it is a political question for the French president.”

In the end, however, Mr Macron is likely do what he has done before and yield to the arguments of Mrs May, Angela Merkel and other EU leaders for a little more time. “The French, like others in Europe, don’t want to be the ones to be blamed if there’s a crash exit,” says Pierre Vimont, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe.

Most of the EU would welcome a managed, agreed and less-damaging Brexit — or even a change of mind by the British people. After nearly three years of Brexit negotiations and political turmoil in the UK, the first outcome would be a relief and an acceptable result; the second could be painted as a political triumph for the pro-European Mr Macron, who never wanted the UK to leave in the first place.

“For Macron either the Brits crash out and he can point to the dire consequences during the [European] elections, or they can’t leave, and he can say even a country like the UK couldn’t manage to do it,” says one senior EU official. “He can win either way. He doesn’t need to be the culprit.”