As Macron’s star rises questions increase

Emmanuel Macron is going to be the next President of France. I know people are saying Marine Le Pen isn’t out of the race, but I see no scenario in which she is voted into the Elysée.

The French may claim to be revolutionaries, but they are terrified of change and Ms Marine scares them. Avec raison. So the serious question is, who is Emmanuel Macron, future President of the republic?

Even in the full flush of enthusiasm for this fresh young political face, still just 39, there are problems and doubts. Mr Macron is a classic product of the hyper-selective system used by the elite to perpetuate itself, producing fellows (mostly) who are good at passing exams but hopeless at running France.

Now he is about to pass the hardest test of all, with the prize of a gilded palace and the world’s best wine cellar. But there is something may be a little too perfect about this golden boy. Always top of his class in school, he appears to have had few friends, preferring piano lessons and drama to sport, and always attaching himself to authority figures.

At the very centre of his life, since his earliest childhood, there has been an infatuation with older women.

His book, Revolution, reveals his earliest influence to have been his grandmother, a teacher. He says in the book that even now, not a day passes when he does not think of her. Then there is his wife, Brigitte Trogneux, 24 years his senior. In public, he seems to be constantly turning towards her, like the boy in class who always has his hand up. She was his married French professor and drama teacher. He decided to marry her when he was 17, when she already had three children.

Is one allowed to say that love for an older woman does raise questions beyond a passing reference to Oedipus?

Even in a nation that prizes privacy, rumours are rampant. It would not normally morally bother most French people that Mr Macron has been rumoured to be in a close relationship with a senior male broadcaster. What does provoke bemusement is the apparent contradiction between this story and his claim to have a perfect marriage. Or is he asexual, and seeking something else?

I pose the question not to be intrusive but because perhaps we should know more about this man before he is handed the keys.

Another of Mr Macron’s very curious relationships is with François Hollande. At the Elysée, he worked directly with the President, always at the forefront of his entourage, privy to the darkest secrets.

Some said Mr Hollande treated him as a son and groomed him as his successor, despite recent rebukes of Mr Macron that appear to have been cinematic.

Despite his reputation as a reformer, albeit one who put the toughest problems in a file marked trop difficile, Mr Macron as a presidential candidate has stopped talking of big-bang reforms. He is staking his hopes for growth instead on interventions that are essentially statist.

Green energy is one idea, but you better bet the unions and parastatal enterprises will take their share. None of this is costed.

His posture towards Germany can be expected to be subservient. Angela Merkel, 23 years his senior (and almost as old as Mr Macron’s wife), is precisely the mutterfigur to which he is most susceptible. He will not dare cross her.

Elsewhere other powers, unidentified, also lurk. It is quite unclear how he financed his campaign, or to whom he might owe favours.

The clientelist media will do their best to protect him.

But by the end of five years, it is hard to see Mr Macron being loved any more than Mr Hollande, his political midwife. France, I fear, will be more foutu than ever. By arrangement with the Spectator