Even if Macron wins the election, Le Pen has won the ideological war

It was exactly halfway through the nearly three-hour-long TV debate on Wednesday when I noted in the margin of my notebook: “10.25pm – Marine Le Pen knows she has lost.”

Not that Marine Le Pen – despite all she has done to soften her image and rename her party the National Rally, rather than the National Front – was ever likely to win the French election debate. Emmanuel Macron is good at television and knows it. He clearly relishes the cut and thrust of debate, and he had all the advantages of incumbency; the debate was his to lose – and he didn’t.

The turning point came after some pointed exchanges on the economy. Macron had delivered a lecture on the difficult budgetary choices any responsible leader has to make and asked how she proposed to balance the books, before quipping that she should go back to her Russian friends (a reference to the loan the National Front took out with a Moscow bank five years ago). Macron then opened his response to the next question – about healthcare – with an oh-so-presidential expression of thanking workers in the sector. By then it was game, set and match, but still another hour and a half to go.