RELIEF, OPTIMISM AND JUBILATION were the most common emotions among the supporters of Emmanuel Macron when he was elected president of France in May 2017. The 39-year-old had seen off the threat of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen. His youthful vitality was inspiring, an indication of a bright new future for France, one he expressed in his victory speech at the Louvre. “A new page of our long history is turning tonight,” he boomed. “I want it to be a page of hope and renewed trust.”
But there was another sentiment that evening in France, more prevalent in the provinces than in Paris. It was a feeling of trepidation. Many people voted for Macron in the second-round run-off because they couldn’t stomach the thought of a Le Pen in the Élysée Palace. Marine may have worked furiously to “de-demonise” the family name but for millions nothing would erase the fact that she was the daughter of Jean-Marie, the strutting founder of the National Front.
It wasn’t so much that Macron had seduced the electorate with his campaign slogan of “Neither Left Nor Right”, but more that he wasn’t Le Pen. As one woman told a foreign reporter: “The French are in distress. We could perhaps be afraid of Le Pen, but we should be afraid of Macron as well. What is his plan? He has none.”
How prophetic she
