Macron vote casts old order aside
Even though Emmanuel Macron, who topped France’s first-round poll on Sunday with just 23.75% of the vote, is expected to beat Marine Le Pen in the second round on Sunday week, the issues in play are so very great that anyone who believes that the European project still offers a far better future than a return to fractious, often bellicose nationalism may have sensibly kept their Champagne on ice. It will, if, when, Macron prevails in a fortnight, taste all the sweeter.
The probability that Le Pen’s National Front (FN) will fall at the last hurdle, a hope strengthened by endorsements for Macron by the republican and socialist candidates, François Fillon and Benoît Hamon, would break the pattern of the last year when one candidate or one idea more extreme, more implausible than the other seduced angry electorates abandoned by long-established political parties or institutions.
