Emmanuel Macron has said that the West may have to send ground troops to Ukraine to support their war against Russia. The president of France made his comments on Monday as he hosted a conference at the Elysée palace about how best to support Ukraine. In attendance were more than 20 European heads of state and government, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as well as representatives from the USA and Canada.

The cynic might wonder if Macron’s grandstanding isn’t a last desperate attempt to claw back some authority before June’s European elections

Macron admitted that there was not a consensus on deploying ground troops to Ukraine but ‘no option should be discarded. We will spare no effort to ensure that Russia does not emerge victorious in this conflict’. If Russia was not defeated, he added, it would threaten ‘Europe’s security and stability’.

Macron’s comments were criticised by his domestic opponents. Marine Le Pen of the National Rally accused the president of acting like a ‘warlord’. She continued: ‘But it’s our children’s lives he’s talking about so carelessly. It is peace or war in our country that is at stake.’

Accusations of war-mongering were also levelled at Macron by the left. ‘Support the Ukrainian resistance, yes. To go to war with Russia and drag the continent along with it. Madness’, declared Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist party.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, founder of La France Insoumise, called Macron’s remarks ‘irresponsible’ because it could lead to a nuclear war.

Macron’s stance on the war in Ukraine has undergone a radical transformation in the two years since Russia’s invasion. Initially, he led western attempts to talk Putin out of war, a position that prompted Ben Wallace, at the time Britain’s Defence Secretary, to indirectly accuse Macron of ‘appeasement’.

Macron continued to lead efforts for a negotiated peace throughout 2022, what Le Monde described in December of that year as his ‘Lone Ranger Diplomacy’. The paper said that his insistence on continuing to talk to Russia ‘troubled’ some of his European allies, and in particular it made him a figure of both hate and mockery in Ukraine. The word ‘Macroning’ became part of the war lexicon, what the British would call wittering on.

What is responsible for the transformation in Macron? First, there is an opportunity to play the West’s senior statesman, a role that Boris Johnson initially seized for his own, to the irritation and envy of Macron. Johnson is no more and his successor, Rishi Sunak, lacks charisma and authority. So, too, does Olaf Scholz, while Joe Biden appears to be getting frailer by the week. This has left a vacuum in western leadership, one which Macron is trying to occupy.

The war in Ukraine also provides the president with a distraction from his many domestic problems; last weekend Macron visited the annual agricultural fair in Paris, a tradition for presidents, and he was left in no doubt of his unpopularity. Dozens of police protected him from baying farmers as he went on a walkabout, while their union leaders rejected an offer from Macron of peace talks. It is another indication of Macron’s diminishing authority on the home front; last year he invited the country’s main political figures to talks to discuss how to heal the divided nation but many didn’t turn up.

One who did was Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, although he wasn’t impressed by what he heard from Macron. He visited the agricultural fair 24 hours after Macron and was treated – in the words of one paper – ‘like a rockstar’ by those present.

The rise in popularity of the National Rally seems inexorable, borne out by poll after poll. The latest one, published today, has the party on 30 per cent, 11 per cent more than Macron’s party.

The cynic might wonder therefore if Macron’s grandstanding isn’t a last desperate attempt to claw back some authority before June’s European elections. But his belligerence could backfire. War fatigue has set in among Europeans, and so, too, has defeatism. A poll last week revealed that only 10 per cent of Europeans believe that Ukraine can win. ‘EU leaders will need to change how they talk about the war,’ said Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), which commissioned the polling. This means focusing ‘on a sustainable, negotiated peace that favours Kyiv – rather than a victory for Putin.’

An online poll in the centre-right Le Figaro, regarded as the newspaper of the military in the same way that the Telegraph is in Britain, asked if readers were for the deployment of French troops in Ukraine. An overwhelming majority are opposed.

It’s unlikely that there would ever be a western consensus for sending ground troops to Ukraine. In mooting the idea Macron, as is his habit, was just ‘Macroning’