This time next year, Emmanuel Macron will face the ultimate test of his political career. Can he be the first French President since Jacques Chirac in 2002 to be elected to a second term in office, or will he join Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande in the also-ran category of his country’s leaders?
For the moment, no matter how counter-intuitive it sounds in the middle of a pandemic that has so far cost the lives of more than 100,000 of his fellow citizens and placed much of the economy in stasis, his message comes down to the assertion that he is the politician best placed to see France through its current traumas and into the dawn of a new age.
