In the autumn of 2018, as the gilets jaunes movement took off, Emmanuel Macron faced a crisis in France that also represented a personal political failure. A little more than a year previously, he had arrived at the Elysée, elected on a centrist, social-liberal, pro-Europe agenda. He embodied fierce opposition to national populism, yet now seemed the president on whose watch populism in France was growing. At the time, I wrote an article for…
