Could Marion Maréchal-Le Pen stop Macron winning a second term?

There were two significant interviews on French television on Sunday evening. One featured Laurent Wauquiez, the erstwhile leader of the centre-right Républicains, who fell on his sword after the disastrous performance of his party in the European elections.

Minutes before Wauquiez announced his resignation, Marion Maréchal gave her first major television interview since stepping down as a National Front MP in June 2017. The 29-year-old niece of Marine Le Pen has kept a low profile in the last two years, channeling her energy into the launch of her Political Sciences Institute in Lyon from where, as she explained to her host, she hopes will emerge “a new generation of political men and women” to challenge what she described as today’s “conformism, groupthink and political correctness”.

Wauquiez broadly subscribed to that line of thinking but he lacked not just the charisma to make himself heard but also the fellow believers within his party.