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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