Macron is heading for re-election and a win over the far right – but he can mostly thank others for that

In a few weeks France will be opting for a relatively quiet life with a leader they know but don’t especially rate, says Sean O’Grady

Emmanuel Macron attends a meeting on the Ukraine crisis in Versailles last week (Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool/AP)

The French, it’s said, like to think themselves exceptional in all sorts of ways, and with good reason. In politics, somehow the Republic has managed to avoid the worst effects of the polarisation that has overwhelmed so much of the rest of the democratic west.

Remarkably, Emmanuel Macron, a centrist president not especially loved or even popular, looks set to win his second term at the elections next month. He is somehow – in electoral terms – transcending the partisan bitterness that has disfigured politics in Britain and America, and has avoided the fractured parliamentary stalemates that stymie governments in Germany and Italy.

If Macron does secure his tenure in the Elysee Palace at the final second round of the presidential election on 24 April, he will be in power until 2027. He will be the first president of the Fifth Republic to win a second term since Jacques Chirac in 2002. At that point he will be 49 years old; a third term or even longer will be at least be a plausible possibility. The “Age of Macron” beckons.

Part of this is down to the way Macron has managed the economy, the Covid-19 pandemic, and done his best to defuse social and cultural divisions, not least those between Paris and other cities versus the countryside. This attempt at national reconciliation was the whole point of the centrist new En Marche! movement Macron founded as his personal vehicle in 2016. Though from the left (as a former Socialist minister for the economy under Francois Hollande), Macron has governed from the centre-right on the economy, union power, terrorism and immigration, and combined this with a traditional commitment to French leadership of the European Union, a prize well within his grasp now that Angela Merkel has retired.

Macron has disappointed the left by giving the rich tax cuts, and disappointed the right by running a big public sector. He has embarrassed and possibly disappointed himself by trying to forge a special relationship first with Donald Trump and then with Russia, as the so-called “Putin Whisperer”. Overall, though, he has proved at least competent and pragmatic during the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine. Macron has reflected and accommodated the broad drift to the right in France, and defanged the extreme right.

Macron is also lucky in his opponents – badly divided on both sides. In the first round of the presidential election, on 10 April, a kaleidoscope of candidates will appear on the ballot paper, from whence a challenger to Macron will emerge. Various socialists, communists, greens, progressives and cranks populate the space once solidly dominated by the Parti Socialiste (PS) and Francois Mitterrand. The PS candidate, Anne Hildago, mayor of Paris, will be lucky to see 5 per cent of the vote. Her appeal to the other leftish parties to unite around her has been rejected.

On the right, a couple of conventional conservatives, with the Republicans’ Valerie Pecresse the most prominent, tussle with, now, two strong contenders from the far right. The familiar figure of Marine Le Pen has had her sovereign territory invaded by an iconoclastic and idiosyncratic media personality, Eric Zemmour. Zemmour is a thinking man’s Trump, and, like Trump, enthrals many and appals more. He has spoiled Le Pen's campaign, but, gaffe-prone and eccentric, not overtaken her.

In a first ballot where voters can pretty much vote with their hearts, Macron may not get much more than 30 per cent of the votes – but that will be enough to establish himself as frontrunner. One of Pecresse, Zemmour or, most likely, Le Pen will then have the honour of being convincingly beaten by Macron after another fortnight of campaigning near the end of the month.

The incumbent president will thus at that point enjoy the advantage bestowed on him by the French presidential election system, because the run-off will probably be a rerun of the 2017 contest – Macron v Le Pen. The two-round system forces hard choices. Now, as in 2017, moderate voters on the right and most voters on the left, as well as his own centrist bloc, will hold their noses and rally behind Macron for fear of Le Pen and her rebranded Rassemblement National (National Rally) and the even greater chaos they would inflict on France.

Compared with five years ago, Le Pen is damaged by her own dalliance with Putin and Trump, and her previous post-Brexit flirtation with leaving the EU, “Frexit”. Despite a continuing national sense of malaise and manifest social and economic challenges, in a few weeks France will be opting for a relatively quiet life with a leader they know but don’t especially rate. Exceptional indeed.