Why the new French leader could be bad for Brexit deal
France elects youngest president as Le Pen crashes
FRANCE is celebrating a political revolution today having elected its youngest ever President.
Centre-left Emmanuel Macron, 39, won an estimated 65% of the vote and far-right rival Marine Le Pen, conceded defeat yesterday evening.
Thousands of his supporters gathered outside Paris’ Louvre Gallery to mark Mr Macron’s landslide win in one of France’s most remarkable elections.
The two main political parties were not in the fight and pro-EU Mr Macron, who has never held elected office, headed En Marche, a movement he created only a year ago.
Mr Macron was congratulated by PM Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
He said: “I am delighted the French people have decisively rejected Le Pen’s politics of hate.”
But Mr Macron, a former investment banker, is fiercely pro-Europe and will not grant the UK any special favours in the split from Brussels. He is also well-placed to lure City financiers across the Channel.
He told supporters: “The European Union remains the best guarantee of peace on the continent. To want to weaken Europe is to let France face the threats of the present world alone.”
Mr Macron faces an uphill battle uniting France where millions of voters snubbed the final run-off vote, unemployment is high and racial tensions are a real issue.
France is still reeling from the terrorist attacks in Paris and Nice, which killed more than 200 people.
Both candidates were mobbed by supporters as they voted.
Mr Macron was all smiles as he cast his ballot in the Channel town of Le Touquet alongside his wife and former school teacher, Brigitte, 64.
Topless feminist activists protested on a church roof in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, before Front Nationale’s Ms Le Pen, 48 – who was calling for the removal of thousands of Muslims and sealing national borders – arrived to vote.
BLOOD sport loving Theresa May is straining at the leash to revive fox hunting in England and Wales.
The Tory leader is toying with promising a free vote for MPs in her party’s manifesto, or personally vowing to savage Labour’s ban. She voted against the 2004 Hunting Act outlawing the use of hounds to tear to death foxes, deer and hares.
The Tory plot was let slip by a loudmouth hunter returning by train to Yorkshire last Thursday, from a secret meet in London. The ruddy-cheeked animal killer boasted that hunts from all over the country were informed May wanted to restore their fun. They in return would mobilise thousands of supporters to campaign in seats where Tories are pursuing vulnerable Labour MPs.
Barbaric blood sports are understandably unpopular in not just towns and cities, but in rural areas too. A friendly Conservative snout predicts May is more likely to allow MPs a choice than pledging outright to scrap the ban.
Behind May’s mask of moderation lies a Tory reactionary bearing the fangs of a calculating political killer.