Emmanuel Macron, France’s rebellious former economy minister, has launched an outsider bid for the presidency, promising to lead a people’s “democratic revolution” against a “vacuous” political system.



The former investment banker, 38, was unknown to the French public until two years ago, is not a member of a political party and has never run for elected office. However, he has promised to blow apart the inadequacies of a governing system that he says has failed the people.

“I have seen from the inside the vacuity of the political system,” Macron thundered in a speech in Bobigny, north of Paris, on Wednesday, referring to his two years as François Hollande’s economy minister during which he criticised complacent career politicians for letting ordinary people fall by the wayside. “Our political system is blocked,” he said.

The notion that a non-politician running independently – with no constituency or political party and no electoral experience – could be a serious contender for the presidency would have been unthinkable only five years ago.

But Macron’s aim to capitalise on France’s deep-rooted distrust of the governing class is seen as timely in a country that has lost respect for the creaking political party apparatus, and where voters are ground down by decades of mass unemployment, inequality, the threat of terrorism and fears that the globalised market system has left people vulnerable and forgotten.

Donald Trump’s election to US president last week strengthened Macron’s conviction that there is currently space for “anti-system” presidential candidates.

But, in stark contrast to Trump’s appeal for an uprising against the elite, Macron, who does not deny he is part of that elite, styles himself as the respectable face of political insurgency. He presents himself as an honest, safe pair of hands with government experience.

Macron said in Bobigny he wanted to reconcile the people to a more “responsible” governing class and respond to what he called “the divorce between the people and those in charge”.

“The system has ceased to protect those it should protect,” he said, denouncing a political apparatus “that lives for itself, more interested in its own survival than in the interests of the country”.

Macron, who comes from the left, said he wanted to unite people from all backgrounds, and would run on a ticket that was neither left nor right.

The Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, has dismissed him as “populism light”. Macron says he is simply promoting democracy, interested only in listening to the people and moving beyond the self-interest of careerist politicians and parties. He is one of France’s most popular politicians and as such has presented himself as a bulwark against the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National.

PM Manuel Valls has dismissed Macron’s politics as ‘populism light’. Photograph: AFP/Getty

In his campaign launch, he attacked the far-right without naming them, warning against forces “turning in on themselves, towards civil war”, people who “insult and exclude”.

Macron, the son of two doctors raised in the Picardy town of Amiens, studied at France’s elite postgraduate civil service school. He is an intellectual who studied philosophy, which is reflected in his speeches. He is said to have earned about €2m (£1.7m) as an investment banker before Hollande appointed him as a senior presidential adviser then later catapulting him to economy minister in 2014.

Macron resigned this summer to prepare a surprise presidential bid. The left of the Socialist party has fiercely denounced his pro-business approach.

Macron’s decision to announce his bid at a training centre in Bobigny, an old Communist bastion in the northern Paris banlieue, was highly significant. He wanted to show he would target places where the left has lost its traditional working-class electorate. It was also an attempt to embarrass the Socialists by criticising the discrimination and inequality that still defines France’s high-rise suburban housing estates, more than 10 years on from the riots of 2005.

Macron is economically liberal and a pro-business reformist, but he is firmly on the left on social issues, including on the freedom to practise religion in a neutral state, equality and immigration.

He describes himself as an idealist, keen to open up business while protecting France’s wide-reaching social safety net. Early proposals have included loosening the 35-hour limit on the working week for young people while letting older people work less.

He wants more freedom for school governance and for the retirement system. He has suggested checks on the competence of government ministers, more proportional representation, and that the president should be held to account by a citizens’ jury.

The timing of Macron’s announcement was key. His current support in the polls comes mainly from older and professional rightwing voters. He is competing for the same centre ground as Alain Juppé, the former prime minister who is favourite to win the first round of the French right’s primary race to chose its presidential candidate this weekend. Macron entering the ring could weaken the turnout for Juppé and throw the right’s primary race wide open.

Macron is also likely to further fragment the already divided French left amid speculation that Valls could stand for president if the deeply unpopular Hollande cannot attempt a bid for re-election.

Although Macron is a popular personality, his chances of winning the presidency are hard to evaluate because the contest is still open, with two primaries to be fought on right and left. But 38% of respondents in a poll published on Tuesday said Macron would make a good president. This ranks him joint second, behind Juppé and equal with François Fillon, the rightwing former prime minister who polls show could make a breakthrough in the primary race.

The challenge for Macron, who has no party apparatus behind him, is to bring in the funding and support from elected politicians. His movement, En Marche (Forward), has more than 96,000 non-paying members and has received €2.7m to date.

His private life has already been fodder for the gossip press. His parents sent him to Paris to finish high school in an attempt to break up his relationship with his French teacher, Brigitte Trogneux, 24 years his senior. Macron and Trogneux stayed together and have been married for nine years.

The two-round presidential election will be held on 23 April and 7 May.