Introduction — April 24, 2017

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron. Click to enlarge

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron. Click to enlarge

We’re going to make a prediction here. If as polls suggest Macron wins the French election don’t be surprised if he doesn’t do what Trump did. Call it a hunch but we have a feeling that Macron will perform a sudden political about face. He will abandon many of his professed “principles” and lend his support — and thus France — to whatever foreign policy plans President Donald Trump may be pursuing.
That may involve more vocal support for Israel and military participation in whatever campaign the U.S. may be fighting in the Middle East.
That may also include supporting the U.S. should President Trump assume a more confrontational stance with Russia. Macron has indeed vowed to make President Putin “respect him” as he “doesn’t owe Russia anything”.
This is in contrast to Macron’s support for the European Union, NATO and globalisation. EU officials and Angela Merkel’s chief of staff have reciprocated by lending loud vocal endorsements to his campaign, together with the French political establishment’s support for Macron.
That Macron worked as an investment banker for Rothschild, together with his support for the EU, NATO and globalisation should have been enough to deter most voters. The fact that it hasn’t and that he’s now the favourite to win the forthcoming election doesn’t augur at all well for France. Ed.

‘At 17, Emmanuel told me he’d marry me’: How 39-year-old French presidential favourite Macron’s wife – who is his ex-teacher and 25 years his senior – is set to become France’s First Lady at age of 64

Emily Kent Smith — Daily Mail April 24, 2017

France’s next first lady could be a grandmother of seven who is 25 years older than her husband – and taught him at school when he was only a teenager.

Brigitte Trogneux, now 64, was once the drama coach of centre-Left candidate Emmanuel Macron, 39, who exit polls predicted will be the next president.

Macron and Ms Trogneux. Click to enlarge

Macron and Ms Trogneux. Click to enlarge

Miss Trogneux last night stood by her husband waving and grinning broadly after he won first place ahead of National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the first round of the country’s presidential elections.

Speaking after France‘s two main parties were kicked out of the election race, Mr Macron, who achieved 23.75 per cent of the vote compared to Le Pen’s 21.53 per cent, said: ‘We have turned a page in French political history.’

The result of the second round vote on May 7 will have major implications for Britain and its departure from the EU. Miss Le Pen wants to completely renegotiate France’s relationship with Brussels while Mr Macron wants closer links.

Macron and Trogneux are likely to be the next residents at the Elysee Palace with Macron becoming the youngest leader of France in modern history.

They first met when Mr Macron was 15 – and he later made a startling promise to his teacher.

‘At the age of 17, Emmanuel said to me, ‘Whatever you do, I will marry you!’,’ Miss Trogneux told Paris Match magazine last year.

The relationship started after Mr Macron acted in Miss Trogneux’s theatre pieces when he was aged just 18 at a private Jesuit school in Amiens, northern France.

Then Brigitte Auziere, a married mother of three, she was supervising the drama club. Mr Macron, a literature lover who wanted to be a novelist, was a member.

He later moved to Paris for his last year of high school. At that time, he recalled, ‘we called each other all the time, we spent hours on the phone, hours and hours on the phone’.

For her part, Miss Trogneux recalled in a television documentary: ‘Little by little, he overcame all my resistances in an unbelievable way, with patience.’

She also said: ‘He wasn’t a teenager. He had a relationship of equals with other adults.’

She eventually moved to the French capital to join him, and divorced her husband. They have been together ever since.

The couple finally married in 2007 – although she did not take his name – and Miss Trogneux is now campaigning by his side. ‘I don’t hide her,’ Mr Macron told a French TV channel this week. ‘She’s here in my life, she has always been.’

During a speech last month, the pair kissed on stage with Mr Macron telling supporters: ‘I owe her an enormous amount because she has contributed to make me the person I am.’

He told of how his wife would never be ‘behind him’, adding: ‘If I’m elected – no, sorry, when we are elected – she will be there, with a role and a place.’

Mr Macron studied Philosophy at Paris Nanterre University, and attended France’s elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration for graduate school.

After working as a public servant for a few years, he became an investment banker at Rothschild.

He rapidly climbed the career ladder, earning millions, before becoming an economic advisor to Francois Hollande’s presidency in 2012 and then economy minister two years later.

In a further colourful development, in February Mr Macron was unexpectedly forced to deny a gay extramarital affair. Political rivals had alleged he was backed by a ‘gay lobby’.

Mr Macron laughed off rumours of a homosexual relationship with Radio France chief executive Mathieu Gallet, during a meeting with activists from his En Marche movement during the campaign.

‘If you’re told I lead a double life with Mr Gallet it’s because my hologram has escaped,’ he said, in a reference to a rival candidate making an earlier appearance as a hologram.

A spokesman for Mr Macron confirmed the comments were ‘a clear denial of the rumours’.

Brigitte Trogneux is pictured alongside her daughter Tiphaine Auziere

Brigitte Trogneux is pictured alongside her daughter Tiphaine Auziere. Click to enlarge

Macron is clear favourite to become France’s youngest president after topping Sunday’s ballot with 23.75 per cent of votes, slightly ahead of National Front (FN) leader Le Pen on 21.53 per cent, according to final results.

Round two of the bitter fight got under way today with Le Pen’s top aide launching a stinging attack on her opponent.

‘Emmanuel is not a patriot. He sold off national companies. He criticised French culture,’ Florian Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen’s National Front told BFM TV, saying she and Macron held completely different visions of France.

Philippot called the independent centrist and former investment banker ‘arrogant’ and said that in Sunday night’s speech acclaiming his move into the May 7 second round ‘he was speaking as if he had won already’.

‘That was disdainful towards the French people,’ Phillipot said. Macron’s victory dinner celebrations at Paris’s upscale Rotonde restaurant amounted to ‘bling-bling biz,’ he said.

According to France’s Interior Ministry, 46 million people voted in the first stage of the elections which knocked the traditional Right and Left parties out of the running for the first time in 60 years.

‘For months and again today I’ve heard the doubts, the anger and the fears of the French people. Their desire for change too,’ Macron told thousands of flag-waving, cheering supporters in Paris on Sunday.

He pledged to unite ‘patriots’ behind his agenda to renew French politics and modernise the country against Le Pen and ‘the threat of nationalists’ as mainstream political leaders urged voters to back him and keep the far-right away from the Elysee Palace.

Polls suggest the ex-investment banker would beat Le Pen easily in the second round run-off on May 7, which will not feature a candidate from the traditional left or right for the first time in six decades.

Despite serving as economy minister in the outgoing Socialist government of Francois Hollande, Macron casts himself as a political ‘outsider’, who only recently formed his movement ‘En Marche!’ (‘On the move’)

‘The challenge is to break completely with the system which has been unable to find solutions to the problems of our country for more than 30 years,’ Macron said, already eyeing crucial parliamentary elections in June.

The outcome capped an extraordinary campaign in a deeply divided and demoralised France, which has been rocked by a series of terror attacks since 2015 and remains stuck with low economic growth.

Le Pen, who has hardened her anti-immigration and anti-Europe rhetoric over the past week, hailed a ‘historic vote’ in front of her supporters, adding: ‘The first stage has been passed.’

The French vote was being closely watched as a bellwether for populist sentiment following the election of Donald Trump as US President and Britain’s vote to leave the EU.

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