Emmanuel Macron’s Trumpian transformation

This new world disorder is distorting our vision, so please excuse an apparently fatuous question. Is Emmanuel Macron turning into Donald Trump? As the 45^th President of the US prepares to step down from the world stage he may be leaving behind another disciple – Emmanuel Macron (Trump would say a ‘mini-me’). The comparison is audacious, and their bracketing together would irk both. But Macron appears to be on a trajectory bringing him closer to the politician whose style and substance he has spent much time deriding.

Macron is of course a more intellectual and urbane individual than Trump. But in style and increasingly in substance the resemblance is growing. In manner, from the outset of his presidency we have grown used to Macron, like Trump, publicly chiding national leaders, applying lessons and upbraiding the media, of which Macron’s recent acidic letter to the Financial Times is the most Trumpian.