Emmanuel Macron is France’s Ed Miliband, not its Justin Trudeau

President François Hollande was unable to fix France during his presidency, now expiring. Can he fix the French election by choosing his successor? 

Unable to run for a second term because of the problem French voters loathe him, Mr Hollande has told friends his final mission is to prevent the election of Marine Le Pen, candidate of the populist National Front. 

A consummate political plotter, Mr Hollande has adroitly — and not even especially covertly — anointed as his successor his former aide and economy minister, the supposedly brilliant and boyish, if slightly odd, Emmanuel Macron.

Macron is a former Rothschild banker, a graduate of the elite École Nationale d’Administration, and 39. A golden boy from provincial France who excelled at exams and married his high-school teacher, 25 years his senior, he is a swot with the characteristic arrogance of the French mandarin. Macron may be blindingly clever, a product of the republican elite, but he is not sympa, as the French say.