The relationship to work has changed profoundly over the past forty years, according to Jérôme Fourquet

With only 26% of favorable opinions, as low as at the peak of the “yellow vests” crisis in January 2019, Emmanuel Macron is again at the bottom in the polls, political analyst Jérôme Fourquet agreed this weekend. at the microphone of the Grand Rendez-vous Europe 1-CNews-“Les Echos”. A resounding survey, similar to that which had allowed him to regain 10 points in six months four years ago, is it still possible in this first quarter of the second term?

For the director of Ifop’s opinion department and author of “L’Archipel français” and “La France sous nos yeux”, nothing is less certain, as the political levers on which the president of the Republic are weakened. A deficit of around forty seats in the National ***embly, a bloc of nearly one in two French people (47%) very unhappy with its action and definitively lost to its cause, “recipes or strings” to reconnect with public opinion (the Great Debate, the Citizens’ Conventions) already used and which leave “the king naked”…

All this combines to make the risk of a “nagging” second term quite real. “We see the idea taking hold that France will live in this kind of in-between for the remaining four years”, points out the analyst.

Loss of work centrality

For Jérôme Fourquet, this situation, far from being purely and simply cyclical, has structural explanations: it is rooted in the state in which there is what he calls the “deep country”. So what happened behind the protest against pension reform it is also and above all our relationship to work, which has changed profoundly over the past forty years.

“In 1990, 60% of French people declared that their work was ‘very important’ in their life. Today, they are only 21%, ”underlines the leader of Ifop. Rise of leisure and consumerism, multiplication of standards and processes leading to a loss of meaning among workers – whether in the hospital sector or in the “bullshit jobs” of the private sector… “Work has lost its centrality”, concludes Jerome Fourquet.

It is difficult, under these conditions, to get the idea of ​​extending working life two more years accepted, especially since the financial argument (if we do nothing, we will have a hole in the coffers) has, for a number of our fellow citizens, lost much of its strength since the Covid-19 and the “whatever the cost”.

Same observation of an opinion divided “between anger and resignation” on the other major issue of the moment, the control of immigration. This, while the announcement by Elisabeth Borne of adjournment of the bill collided with the crisis in Mayotte to feed the feeling of powerlessness of the political cl*** to seize the real problems.

A painting that paves the way from the Elysée to Marine Le Pen for 2027? “With a score of 41.5% in the second round of 2022 and 89 RN deputies sent to the National ***embly, we can no longer rule out this possibility in principle, as we have done so far”, replies the political scientist.