French presidential elections, with their two-round system, are tough to forecast but you can place a safe bet on the next one, only nine months away: the new president will hail from a dysfunctional party on the right, writes The Times Paris correspondent Charles Bremner.
The victor’s political colour seems clear, with a majority of voters identifying themselves as between centre-right and hard nationalist. The parties of the left appear to be out for the count, although the moribund Socialists held on to their regional councils in elections last month.
The presidential race is coloured by disarray in the candidates’ parties. France’s elected monarch is still supposed to emerge from a mystical “conversation between a man and the people” but all have needed parties to propel them to power since Charles de Gaulle left the scene in 1969.
This year those parties have lost public trust, especially the newest of them, Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche, the start-up with his initials, which he created as a political debutant in 2016 and led to victory and an absolute majority in parliament in 2017.
Macron and senior figures from other parties are dismayed by the rejection of the political class that has been reflected in record low turnouts in recent elections, and by the yellow-vest grassroots revolt that shook the country 30 months ago.
Originally a hybrid of centre-left and soft conservative, Macron has tacked rightward over the past year, cracking down on Islamism and talking tough on identity politics and law and order.
Two of his senior ministers, Gérald Darmanin and Bruno Le Maire, said recently that his policies were little different from those of the conservative Republicans, which they used to belong to. The Gaullist legacy party was revived by success in last month’s regional elections but has since fallen back into the feuding between presidential hopefuls that has dogged it for a decade.