Half-way through President Macron’s 5-year term as president of France alarm bells are ringing that his modernising centre-right project for power is turning him into a second Valéry Giscard d’Estaing – a young, economically ultra-liberal, reforming president in the 1970s who only lasted one term before losing to the socialist François Mitterrand in 1981.
Macron has only ever been elected once to anything in his life – the French presidency. He has been doing political work experience since May 2017, but France is not warming to its cerebral president.
His first big national electoral test is next March when 35,000 communes from cities like Paris, Lille and Marseilles to lowly towns elect their mayors and local councillors. This is the equivalent of US mid-term elections or regional parliament elections in Germany.
