Emmanuel Macron ascended as if from nowhere. A political outsider with insider polish, he promised to remake France not from the barricades but from the boardroom—with just enough rebellion to be thrilling, just enough poise to be safe. His movement, En Marche!, was marketed as a grassroots insurrection: youthful, pro-European, ecologically conscious, socially open. Macron himself, articulate and polished, was often likened to Barack Obama—a once-in-a-generation figure who could channel popular discontent through a centrist, modernising lens. Yet 88% of his party’s original parliamentary candidates in 2017 had never held elected office, and 70% were drawn from France's professional and managerial elite—hardly the stuff of revolution.
Yet, as with Obama, the promise quickly ran aground. The rhetoric of renewal gave way to the realities of elite continuity. The technocratic sheen masked a deeper absence: a failure to build lasting political infrastructure beyond a personality cult and a parliamentary coalition of convenience. The energy of En Marche!—that broad but shallow surge of discontent and hope—was absorbed, diluted, and ultimately defused. The movement’s name, “Forward!”, now feels more like a slogan for treadmilling than transformation.
From Jupiter to Janus
Macron called himself a “Jupiterian” president, ruling from above the fray. But the very detachment that projected authority also projected arrogance. His reign was not merely aloof; it was imperious. He scolded workers, mocked the poor, and delivered sermons rather than speeches. While he insisted that the French people yearned for majesty, he failed to grasp that they also demanded solidarity. The president who began as a vessel for middle-class aspirations ended up as a symbol of elite insulation. By March 2024, his approval rating had slumped to just 27%—among the lowest for a French president at that stage in office.
It is telling that Macron’s most defining domestic legacy may be the Gilets Jaunes—a furious, decentralised revolt born not from ideology but from visceral alienation. That it erupted under a president elected to “renew trust” in democratic institutions is an irony lost on nobody. At the height of the movement, 70% of the public expressed sympathy with the protests. His pension reforms, though fiscally prudent, were rammed through by decree. Macron has invoked Article 49.3—a constitutional bypass of parliamentary votes—23 times in his second term alone. The Republic, under his watch, became more centralised and less participatory.
