The real winner of the French presidential election? François Hollande

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. Days after winning the Republican party primary, François Fillon, once Macron’s most dangerous potential opponent, was put under investigation for having put his wife and children on the payroll of the state, with little evidence that they did much if any work.