I want to bring a democratic revolution, says Macron

Former economy minister announces bid for French presidency, seeing himself as a maverick outsider

FRANCE is blocked by vested interests and cannot go on with the same old faces, claimed a 38-year-old ex-banker who set a cat among the pigeons on both the Right and Left yesterday by announcing his candidacy French presidency.

After weeks of pseudo-suspense, Emmanuel Macron threw his hat into the presidential ring and vowed to depart from “the same men and ideas” that have run the country’s politics for decades.

Mr Macron was President François Hollande’s éminence grise at the Elysée, advising him on economic reform before serving as economy minister from 2014 to this year.

But he angered his former mentor by resigning to create his new centrist political movement, called En Marche (“On the Move”). Yesterday, he became the latest French presidential hopeful to cast himself as a maverick outsider in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in America.

“I’ve seen the emptiness of our political system from the inside… I reject this system,” he said, calling for a “democratic revolution”.

Speaking from a gritty Parisian suburb, the clean-cut, pro-business exminister, who is married to a divorcee 20 year his senior and who has never held elected office, insisted he was “neither of the Left or the Right” but “for France”. He has no party apparatus but has won popularity for pledging to free up France’s sclerotic labour laws to bring jobs to deprived areas.

The mainstream centre-Right French Republicans party is tipped to win France’s two-stage presidential election in April and May, but the Trump victory has sent jitters through the political establishment.

Mr Macron’s candidacy has fuelled that uncertainty, with the Republicans and ruling Socialist parties yet to nominate their candidates, less than six months before the vote.

A buoyant far-Right Front National under leader Marine Le Pen, who announced her slogan “In the name of the people” yesterday, insisted that a Trump victory could herald another surprise in her favour in France.

“Mr Macron is a candidate of the banks, there’s always one,” she said dismissively.

She chose a blue rose to illustrate her campaign as “the symbol of the people being able to make possible what the elites constantly present as impossible”, she said in her speech.

A poll on Tuesday suggested Mr Macron is one of France’s most “presidential” figures behind election favourite Alain Juppé, a 71-year-old former prime minister promising to foster a “happy identity” for France while cutting state spending. He is seeking the Republicans’ nomination ahead of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy and former prime minister François Fillon.