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.
On the international stage, Macron positioned himself as Europe’s philosopher-king. He warned of NATO’s “brain death,” championed European “strategic autonomy”, even federalism, and sought to balance China, Russia, and America with Gaullist flair. But the results were mixed—at best. His grand designs rarely translated into coalition-building. Eastern Europe viewed him with suspicion, Germany with guarded patience. While his commitment to Ukraine was forceful, it highlighted rather than resolved France’s declining centrality in the European project. Macron made over 30 foreign trips in 2022 alone, but with little enduring impact. Meanwhile, France’s share of EU GDP has declined from 20.6% in 2000 to 17.2% in 2023.
His economic record defies simple narrative. Reforms of the labour market and tax system earned business-friendly praise. France’s unemployment fell, and foreign investment rose. Yet so did national debt and inequality. Public debt rose from 96.4% of GDP in 2017 to 111.6% by the end of 2023. Nearly 50% of French workers above the age of 50 reported difficulty making ends meet in a 2023 CSA survey. The promise of a nimble “start-up nation” turned into a litany of closures and cost-of-living complaints. What began as a blend of technocracy and innovation ended in a fog of austerity and drift.
The Destruction of the Centre
Now, as the curtain falls, Macron’s legacy looks less like that of a builder and more like that of a transition figure—one who presided over the decline of centrist liberalism without forging a viable replacement. The political terrain he leaves is scorched. With the traditional parties hollowed out—their 2022 legislative vote shares at just 6.5% (Socialists) and 10.4% (Republicans)—the extremes have filled the vacuum. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National surged to 41.5% in the second round of the 2022 presidential election. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left movement has in turn consolidated anti-system anger. Macronism, in retrospect, appears not as a solution to polarisation but as its catalyst.
Like Obama, Macron will be remembered as a president of hope who governed as a manager. The centrist project was meant to quell populist fires. Instead, it may have fed them by draining the moderate centre of credibility. What remains is not just disillusionment, but cynicism: a sense that proposed reform is a charade, consensus an illusion, and democracy a tool for elites in suits.
Macron is not the only cause of France’s fractures, but he did little to mend them. His reign has shown how charisma without connection, intellect without empathy, and power without participation can deepen rather than resolve national malaise. Jupiter has come down from Olympus. But the Republic he leaves behind is no closer to the stars.
Statement
Macron promised to transcend left and right, but instead he emptied the political center of meaning. En Marche! blurred ideology into managerialism, sidelining traditional parties without building lasting alternatives. What emerged was not renewal but erosion—a technocratic vacuum that emboldened the extremes. Le Pen surged, Mélenchon mobilised, and moderate trust collapsed. By centralising power and bypassing democratic process, Macron discredited the very consensus he claimed to defend. His presidency became a bridge—between a fading liberal order and a more polarised future. Macron didn’t defeat populism; he cleared its path by exhausting the middle ground.