Macron ‘did not expect’ election win honeymoon, now Edouard Philippe ‘could topple him’

Emmanuel Macron vows to represent all French people

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The Republic en Marche leader won a second round of voting at the weekend, seeing off right-wing rival Marine Le Pen with 58.5 percent of the vote to her 41.5 percent. However, Mr Macron’s celebrations were conspicuously muted, suggesting he knew he had not won through popularity alone.

Edouard Philippe, Mr Macron’s former Prime Minister, may now pose a threat to the French premier’s leadership, as the loose coalition of allies that first got him elected begins to fray.

Mr Macron’s win in the second round of voting may have been well over the 50 percent threshold, but was a drop in the vote he received against Ms Le Pen by more than 7 percent when compared with 2017 results.

During the first round, the incumbent President received nearly 28 percent of the vote, out of a field of 12 candidates.

According to Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, a Paris-based journalist and political commentator, Mr Macron’s appearance at his victory party on Sunday night lasted 15 minutes, with everyone being sent home by 10.30pm.

One pundit joked to her of Mr Macron’s victory lap: “This is positively geriatric”.

There were, she said, “no honking cars draped in tricolours, driving up and down the Champs-Elysées all night”, as had been the case when Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy had won.

Neither was there a rock concert until dawn on the Place de la Bastille, as had been the case with François Mitterrand and François Hollande.

Ms Moutet described the party on the Champ de Mars – the large central Parisian park that houses the Eiffel Tower – was “low-key”, Mr Macron’s speech “conciliatory”.

The relatively young politician has earned a reputation in France for supposedly gloating on his successes when given the opportunity.

Writing for UnHerd on Tuesday, Ms Moutet said that instead the winning candidate was “uncharacteristically humble”.

She added: “In any other situation, Macron would have demanded a Roman triumph and ridden back to the Élysée behind four immaculate horses, his face painted with minium and his wife Brigitte in Dior whispering in his ear dire warnings about the Tarpeian Rock.

“Instead, he showed up an hour and a half after his victory had been announced to address a crowd of the party faithful, oscillating on the lawn to Daft Punk in front of empty bleachers.”

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Remarking on the French election earlier this week, Douglas Murray, a British political commentator and author of The Strange Death of Europe, said that Mr Macron should not feel smug about the victory as there was “little love for him in France”.

He added that there was “even less enthusiasm about how he has governed the country”, claiming that the main reason the French President won a second term was because “his surname is not Le Pen”.

Mr Murray’s appraisal of the win seems to be an opinion shared across the English Channel.

Ms Moutet said: “Macron knew most of his votes came from those who saw him as the least-worst alternative in a miserable choice, and cast their ballots with clenched teeth.

“He wanted to erase the merest suspicion that he expected to enjoy a honeymoon.”

Meanwhile, Mr Macron faces a threat from his first Prime Minister, who he fired during the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Philippe’s popularity has since reportedly skyrocketed.

In October 2021, Mr Philippe created “Horizons” – a new centre-right political party comprising mostly of old Les Republicains friends.

Ms Moutet added: “The word is that he is negotiating with [Le Republic en Marche] for 120 MP seats, i.e. the promise that his candidates will run unopposed in winnable constituencies.

“In 2017, the Centrist François Bayrou tried this with a newly elected Emmanuel Macron: he got frozen in outer darkness for five years. Macron cannot afford this today.”

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