Hollow man Emmanuel Macron elected President of a declining France
It was an election that pitted a challenge versus a tired status quo, opportunism versus seizing rising public moods in both France, Europe and the wider west, it was about patriotism versus globalism.
In each of these categories the former won. The embodiment of this victory is Emmanuel Macron, but that’s all he is: an embodiment.
To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, Macron is a hollow man, a stuffed man….a headpiece filled with straw.
Eliot’s poem ends with a ominous prophecy,
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper”.