Droite on? Gaullists pin election hopes on a fresh face

When Valérie Pécresse crossed rural France this year, visiting farms and villages to escape what she called her grotesquely unfair image as a “blonde bourgeoise” from Versailles, she promised to smash the French Republic’s glass ceiling. “I will be the first female president of France,” she told meeting halls to cheers.

Since Emmanuel Macron won the presidency in 2017 as a shock outsider with no election experience and a party put together in a few months, French politics has thrived on novelty. Pécresse’s supporters say her status as a woman