Jonathan Miller

Who would have thought it? French president Emmanuel Macron has defeated the French railway unions. His victory is as symbolic as that of Thatcher’s defeat of the miners and suggests that the days when unions in France can hold the country to ransom are over. Those who initially dismissed this putative Napoleon as an empty suit have gravely underestimated him. The nationalised French railway is not merely a transportation system. It is a quintessential expression of France itself. Globally admired for its pioneering high-speed TGV intercity trains, it has been a pillar of the national economy, a mighty symbol of the unitary French state and a monument to the enduring power of trade unions. It was also considered irreformable. Well, that might once have been true.

One of the must-have applications for smartphones in France is called C’est la Grève, which helpfully shows all the strikes ongoing at the moment, and those to come, with useful regional breakdowns. It’s indispensable for le planning and proof that French developers understand how to tailor digital products to local market demands. At the moment at the top of the list on my C’est la Grève app is a national and general strike this Thursday, which promises to be a key moment in what looks like an increasingly desperate effort to bring down Jupiter, Emmanuel Macron, president of the republic.

Have the French belatedly realised the error of their regicide and decided to restore the monarchy?  If so, will the regime of Emmanuel Macron, whose seizure of power must certainly be inspiring politicians around the globe with its brutal efficacy, end the same way?  Macron’s glittering and symbolic appearance yesterday at the Palace of Versailles to address a joint session of the National Assembly – over which he currently exercises complete domination – and the Senate, will give historians, semioticians and journalists plenty to mull (although Macron has said that his thoughts are too complex to be explained to the media). But Macron played a blinder. Many French deeply regret not having a king.

Every politician in France is on manoeuvres. Vast chasms have opened up in the anti-Le Pen coalition and the country faces another two-round election for the National Assembly in June. It's likely that a fractured and dysfunctional legislature will emerge, complicating or even making impossible the program proposed by president-elect Emmanuel Macron. Nonetheless, Macron will still be hoping that amidst this electoral entropy he can push his own slate to the forefront. This is a big ask. Possibly only about 20 per cent of voters supported him for the presidency for any reason other than he was not Marine Le Pen. His program is either not understood or not supported by the vast majority of voters. His ambition to secure a majority in the assembly looks impossible to me.

There is perhaps some remote mathematical chance that France's new elected monarch will be struck down by a meteorite before he is officially inaugurated in a grand parade on the Champs Elysée on May 14th, amidst a 21-gun salute, helicopters flying overhead, the Garde Républicaine in full-dress uniform on shining horses, generals posed upright in their ceremonial 4x4s, bands playing, bunting flapping. Barring that, Mr President, you appear to have played a blinder, winning the keys to the Elysée in what appears to have been a stunning political insurgency, and you have done so promising to reform an immobilised French economy.

As the polls reopen this weekend for the coronation of Emmanuel Macron, the political establishment will congratulate themselves for having once again imposed their Parisian groupthink on the entire country. Without getting too bogged down in the election, which Marine Le Pen will certainly lose, the question poses itself: how does this imposition of ideology work? To see how, and as a small distraction from the great events sweeping the national stage, may I invite you to my own corner of southern France? Specifically, to the city of Béziers, whose 75,000 inhabitants face monumental challenges in the struggle to adapt to globalisation and to escape years of decay presided over by the local socialist party.

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 and it's important to keep the suspense going as long as possible. But I see no scenario in which the French will vote her into the Elsyée.  Le Pen's attempt to distance herself from the toxic National Front founded by her father, declaring herself an independent, just like Macron, is entertaining. But it will change nothing. The French may claim to be revolutionaries but they are terrified of change and Marine scares them. Avec raison.  So the serious questions are, who is Emmanuel Macron, the future president of the republic, and what should we expect from his forthcoming quinquennat?

In the biggest comeback since Lazarus, French president François Hollande has installed Emmanuel Macron as his certain successor, with the collusion of the media, the magistrates and less than 25 per cent of the voters. If Hollande has been a terrible president, the result of the first round of voting confirms that he is a master political technician, with a specialty in dirty tricks. It seems impossible that he will now retire quietly from public life. Whether he will have an official role, or merely be a Svengali-like figure in the shadows of the presidency remains to be seen. One by one, obstacles to Macron’s succession were ruthlessly eliminated and Hollande’s fingerprints are everywhere.

Who will win the French presidential election? Does it even matter? Nothing in the programmes or personalities of the leading contenders gives confidence that any of them can fix the Fifth Republic and the corruption, dysfunction and stagnation that it has inflicted on the French. At Marie-Trinité’s café in the southern French village where I am an elected councillor, the mood before the voting is one of weary resignation and disgust. Yet this election does matter, and it can make a difference, not only because all of the probable outcomes threaten to make things even worse, but because almost all of them have the potential to be particularly painful for Britain, whatever the result of our own election on June 8.

Some people in Britain may be somewhat confused by Emmanuel Macron, leading candidate in the French presidential election, now just days away from the first round of voting. Who is he? What does he stand for? As polls claim that the former economy minister in the government of François Hollande is likely to be the next president of the republic, it is time for a wider audience to understand the fundamental beliefs that underpin Macron’s candidacy. Is he a man of the left, or the right? Or neither? Or both? Is political and economic liberalism a fundamental value of the left? What is his view on French culture? On trees and fish? Does money eat? Or breathe? Devote just a minute and a half to this captivating video and all will be perfectly clear.