PARIS: Emmanuel Macron’s candidate for mayor of Paris, Benjamin Griveaux, warned Thursday that the French capital had become dangerously disconnected from the rest of the country and needed to do more to halt a middle-class exodus.
On the eve of Britain’s departure from the EU, the 42-year-old Macron loyalist hoping to oust Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo in March elections compared Paris to anti-Brexit London.
Noting the “absolute divide” between London, which voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, and many parts of the country which voted to leave, Griveaux argued that Paris too had become a wealthy bubble. “Little by little Paris has become disconnected from the rest of the country, and it’s not just since Macron or Hidalgo,” Griveaux, who trails in third place behind Hidalgo and a conservative candidate according to recent polls, told the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.