A continent. But who is the enigmatic Emmanuel, asks
warned that the EU needs to be less dysfunctional to avoid a “Frexit”. He also believes its stunningly inefficient Common Agricultural Policy is essential for French farmers. Something will have to give if he makes it to the top job.
How good would a Macron government be for post-Brexit Britain as negotiations on trade arrangements get under way with a sour tone from Brussels? Macron, says an acquaintance, “is not Anglophile” so Theresa May cannot rely on sentiment guiding his hand. He has made no secret of his wish to move banking jobs to Paris in the wake of Brexit. “And,” observes a senior Tory who witnessed his visit, “he said so to TV cameras immediately after he left No 10 after his first visit.” He leaves visitors in no doubt that he considers Brexit “an absolute disaster”. Even more troublesome for No 10, he has said that the Le Touquet border deal, which stops refugee flows at the French coast, “must be renegotiated”.
Some enjoy that outspoken edge of Macron’s style. Others in the tense world of top-tier European politics deem it clumsy — what goes around has a habit of coming around. According to Yanis Varoufakis, the firebrand former Greek finance minister, he objected vociferously as economic s mini ster in 2015 to the German austerity plan imposed on Greece. “I do not want my generation to be responsible for Greece exiting Europe,” he reportedly texted Merkel. Such shows of independence also annoyed Hollande, who noted that Macron had to be seen “to be on my team” if he was to thrive. As a former Rothschild investment banker, he’s fluent in English (unusual in recent French leaders) and has a legacy that puts him alongside a new breed of moderates on the world stage — think Justin Trudeau.
It is also one of the many paradoxes inside the Macron package. He says he remains a “child of provincial class”, born without a guaranteed ticket to the cloistered French elites. But his path to success is really that of an intellectually gifted and driven outlier. It was not a tough start — he is the offspring of an eminent medical family who attended first a Jesuit school in Amiens and was then sent to one of the best schools in Paris. Formally, the move was made to prepare him for university in the capital. Less formally, the move was intended to separate him from Brigitte Auzière, the teacher in Amiens with whom he had begun a relationship when he was 17 and she 39. Her favouriti sm, followed by rumours of romance after they worked on a school play, drew sniggers. Classmates dubbed him “le Petit Prince”.
But the relationship sur- vived separation and parental disapproval. They finally wed after a bitter divorce on her part in 2007, though he remains close to her children from the previous marriage — one of her sons is older than he is, a daughter works for his campaign. In his wedding speech, he conceded they were “not a normal couple — even if I don’t like that word — but we’re a couple that exists”.
These days, Macron is 39 and Brigitte Macron 64. Her style is svelte with legs to keep the French paparazzi in business. Now known as Mme Macron, she is more than another photo opportunity by the candidate’s side. She coached him, as a former drama teacher, on voice projection.
Few doubt that they will make an urbane couple in the Elysée Palace. The bigger doubts surround whether his mix-and-match politics can work, given the financial straits of the country and its need for a tough budget. A new movement, with no indication in its name as to its ideology, is a clever positioning for keeping on board Leftist voters while scooping up Conservative voters who dislike the divisive rhetoric and parochialism of Le Pen.
If Macron wins, he will have seen off the most ferocious threat from the far Right yet in European politics and that will be no small achievement. His greatest risk, after the thrilling campaign, is ending up looking like yet another member of the Davos-class elites after a rebranding exercise. Macron is on the march, but Macronism is still a mystery.
@annemcelvoy Anne McElvoy is senior editor at
The Economist and head of
Economist Radio