Emmanuel Macron hopes to reinvent himself in 100 days

During his audacious first bid for the French presidency, in 2017, Emmanuel Macron would scold supporters at campaign rallies who jeered when he name-checked his rivals. “Don’t whistle at them; let’s beat them!” the 39-year-old pretender urged the crowds with a smile, adapting a slogan borrowed from the high priest of political positivity, America’s Barack Obama. French politics, Mr Macron argued forcefully then, was in need of benevolence and collective endeavour not obstructive division. It was time to move an irritable, rebellious country to a more stable, consensual place.