Emmanuel Macron, surreptitious socialist

Charlemagne
Emmanuel Macron, surreptitious socialist
The French president, seducer of the right, has embraced big government
THE TONE was sharp. Both hands were thumped testily on the table. The water glass trembled. “We’re putting a mad amount of dosh into social benefits!” cried Emmanuel Macron, sitting with his advisers upon silk-upholstered chairs in the Elysée palace. The video, posted unapologetically by an aide, went viral. This was in 2018, only a year into his presidency, and confirmed what many of the French already suspected. Their new president—a former investment banker, who scrapped the wealth tax and picked one (and later another) centre-right prime minister—was a right-leaning liberal who secretly sought to reward the rich and demolish the modèle social, France’s cradle-to-grave welfare state.
The image endures. The president is still linked in the French mind to looser labour laws, an end to special pension rights for railway workers, and the longest strikes since …