When Emmanuel Macron chose to make his presidential victory speech to his supporters from the grand surroundings of the Louvre, he was sending a message about the style in which he intends to govern. The vast palace-turned-museum has, over centuries, stood for monarchy, empire and revolution: a mix of past glory and high culture with the modernity of a giant glass pyramid in its midst.

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France’s youngest president has made two different promises for his leadership style. The 39-year-old has vowed to bring a youthful “revolution” to French politics but also to return to the historic tradition of a strong leader who can “embody the nation”. He believes that ever since King Louis XVI’s head was chopped off in the revolution, France has been constantly trying to compensate for the lack of a true leader figure who could personify France. Macron, a centrist political novice, who had never before run for election and until three years ago was unknown, believes he can fill the role of republican guide of the nation.

Macron’s first public gesture as president was to deliberately, solemnly make a long walk alone under spotlights across the Louvre’s Napoleon courtyard to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the European anthem. It was a carefully coordinated reference to the style of the late Socialist president François Mitterrand, who presented himself as a kind of republican, elected monarch.

Every new French leader wants to contrast the style of the president who went before. If the Socialist François Hollande – who was once Macron’s mentor – was a plodding “ordinary bloke” who described himself as “President Normal” and turned his own door handles at the Elysée instead of waiting for a butler, Macron wants to bring back what he styles as a lofty poise and distance.

But Macron, who will take office within days, will have no state of grace. He is taking over a country exhausted by decades of mass unemployment, impatient with a stagnant economy, still living under a state of emergency, facing a constant terrorist threat and at war abroad – with troops still deployed across the Sahel region of Africa against jihadi groups.

The election has highlighted a significant divide between rich and poor, between thriving, diverse cities and the far away de-industrialised peripheral areas and countryside. Millions chose the far right and the hard left in the two-round presidential race and many have reservations about Macron’s pro-business economic project, fearing livelihoods are threatened by globalisation. He has to prove he can reach out beyond his own camp, particularly since a significant proportion of those who voted him into office did so to keep out the far right rather than adhere to his policy plans. “He’s aware of the immense responsibility on his shoulders,” several members of his team repeated.

One of Macron’s first moves will be to cut and streamline France’s strict labour laws in favour of businesses. He has talked of using presidential decrees to push this through fast as soon as possible. But labour law changes were forced through by decree under Hollande and saw months of street demonstrations in 2016. Navigating the hangover from that social confrontation will be his first major challenge.

Macron knows better than most that the first days of a French presidency can make or break an entire mandate. He was deputy chief of staff to the Socialist president Hollande, whose lack of preparation and dithering in the early days led to an unpopularity from which he was never able to recover. Macron is also aware of ill omens. He was on the newly elected Hollande’s plane to Berlin to see Angela Merkel when it was hit by lightning – a metaphor for a tepid diplomatic relationship that did not fully recover.

The pro-European Macron will make his first foreign leader visit to Merkel quickly. He is also expected to make an early trip to see French troops in Mali to signal that French international military engagement will continue.

One of Macron’s most-repeated promises has been “efficiency” of government. He wants to introduce new ethics rules for politicians, including an initiative against nepotism after the corruption investigations of the rightwing candidate François Fillon and the investigations of Marine Le Pen’s party funding during the presidential campaign. He also wants quickly to loosen red tape for small businesses and cut class sizes in primary schools in disadvantaged areas.

But exactly how he will deliver his manifesto pledges depends on whom he appoints as prime minister and whether his fledgling “neither right or left” political movement En Marche! (On the Move!) can win a majority in the parliamentary elections in June. Without a majority, Macron’s hands will be tied. The next six weeks of parliamentary campaigning will be crucial.

There has never been so much secrecy surrounding who will be appointed French prime minister. Because the centrist Macron, who comes from no political party, needs to strike a balance between supporters from the left and right, he has kept quiet about who he will pick. He has said only that the prime minister must be “strong” and politically experienced. Speculation has ranged from a centrist ex-minister such as François Bayrou to ex-ministers from the political right or left, or the centrist MEP Sylvie Goulard, but it could also be an appointment from civil society. His 15-minister government will have a male-female balance, one-third of whom will be new to politics.

“We need to do away with this political class, which is all too often made of men over 50 who never had a proper job,” Macron has said, promising that his 577 parliamentary candidates will be half women and half political newcomers.

But if he doesn’t win a parliamentary majority, he will be plunged into horse-trading for a new type of coalition. He will need to be a very skilled politician to make it work and yet he says he hates politics and has little interest in it. “Being president of the Republic is not about loving politics, it’s about taking care of the French,” he has said, warning that previous presidents “loved politics too much” and that politics had become cut off from real people’s lives.

Becoming cut off has always been a risk for presidents who take over the gilded office at the grandiose Elysée palace, where the silence is punctuated by the sound of gold clocks chiming and the view from the leader’s desk is a vast expanse of manicured lawn behind high walls. “Of course power isolates,” Macron told an interviewer on the campaign trail, arguing that he would not let it happen to him.