Emmanuel Macron needs establishment's help to deliver
France's new president will need help from the parties he crushed in the election if he is to deliver his ambitious agenda.
Monday 8 May 2017 07:02, UK
A 39-year-old who had never run for office before may have won the French presidency, but Emmanuel Macron now has to deliver on his promises of change and difference.
His En Marche! party set out a broad agenda which will be a challenge to implement, but one of those closest to him insists their immediate priorities are clear.
"Business, education, morality," Benjamin Griveaux tells me in the En Marche! offices where many of the young volunteers who have been galvanised by Mr Macron were manning the phones right up until the last minutes of the campaign.
An Alastair Campbell figure to the party leader, Mr Griveaux says there are some issues that cannot wait.
"There are three things. First, liberalise the labour market and create insurance against unemployment for everyone. This will be done by the end of the summer.
"Second, education and dividing by two in the poor areas the number of children in a classroom when you are in the first grade.
"And the third one will be the moralisation bill about public life.
"Because we are fed up with politicians behaving badly. Hiring their family as advisors for instance but also running for congress and not being fully and absolutely honest about their previous life. For instance, our congressmen won't be able to have consulting activity when he will be in office because it will be a conflict of interest"."
Mr Griveaux, who was one of just four people in the room when Mr Macron first mooted the possibility of setting up a new movement without professional politicians at its heart and has been there ever since, seems confident those pledges can be met. Oh, and a big consultation on the European Union by the end of the year, he adds.
Ambitious? Yes, but Mr Griveaux says: "We are an optimistic party and we are optimistic we will get enough support to get our reforms through."
But optimism isn't reality and one of the most pressing things on Mr Macron's to-do list is to get enough support to get his plans through the French parliament. That may be easier said than done.
Part of the attraction of En Marche! to many voters is its newness, its lack of connection to "the establishment".
But a virgin party has no legacy by way of politicians willing to vote to pass legislation. So the work to change that will be a pressing issue in the coming weeks.
In truth it began some time back and Senator Francois Patriat was an early convert.
One of the first to spot Mr Macron's talents when the young former banker worked in Francois Hollande's socialist government, the senator has now himself stepped down as a socialist to help get backing for Mr Macron's programme.
A political veteran, Mr Pariat tells me inside the ornate senate building in Paris that there are six challenges.
"The terrorist threat, the security challenge, the European challenge, the climate challenge, the industrial challenge and the economic challenge," he said.
And Sen Patriat believes others will come on board because they will see that Mr Macron is a doer, a pragmatist.
"Emmanuel Macron knows what the difference is, to see the world as it is and how it should be tomorrow and that is not easy in this country as unfortunately it is an old conservative country.
"France is conservative and we need to create a new electoral cleavage. It can't be the left nor the right - it will be the progressives".
En Marche! is fielding candidates in all seats in the forthcoming legislative elections and in the ongoing spirit of optimism it hopes to get a majority government.
But barring that the centrist party will need support from the right and left in French politics, from parties that En Marche! crushed in the election.
Wooing them over may be hard, but Sen Patriat says even the old school politicians are waking up to the fact things need to change.
On Mr Macron's chances of building a coalition of support (or possibly a coalition in government) he says: "With him what you have is not just vision but also an ability to take a natural risk and the taking of risks, is what allows you to possibly succeed."
The first challenge in succeeding as President may be in the art of wooing.