Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation. By Sophie Pedder. Bloomsbury; 297 pages; £25

AT A time of spreading despondency about democracy and the future of liberal values, it is heartening to find a book that has a good news story to tell about both—so far. This ringside account of Emmanuel Macron’s rise to win the French presidency and his early exercise of power by Sophie Pedder, The Economist’s Paris bureau chief, is all the more encouraging for the portrait it paints of its subject. As well as a standard bearer for liberalism, Mr Macron emerges as an extremely adept political operator with a healthy streak of cynicism and ruthlessness, a hyper-active politician comfortable with the trappings of power. As the author writes at the end of her impressive combination of reportage and analysis, enriched with tête-à-tête interviews, all this makes the 40-year-old leader “a French president who matters more than most”.

In last year’s tumultuous election, Mr Macron was extremely lucky as his opponents repeatedly shot themselves in the foot, leading to his run-off against the National Front’s Marine Le Pen. She was bound to lose, but made things even worse for herself by a calamitous performance in the climactic televised debate. Internationally, he has been able to present himself as a voice of reason as he seeks to bolster his country’s weight in the age of Donald Trump.

But luck has only been part of the story. Ms Pedder portrays Mr Macron as a multi-dimensional strategist who knows how to make the most of what comes his way. He engages in big-symbol gestures, grand rhetoric and resonant narratives designed to counter the appeal of populism. But he also shows a near-obsessive taste for detail. He is ready to trade arguments with protestors to demonstrate his popular touch. He is, Ms Pedder writes, at once romantic and deeply calculating, a philosopher king and a hard-headed cynic.

A reformist, resolutely modern French president who wants to free his country from the straitjacket of the over-mighty state has been a long time coming. The space for such a figure became evident in the final years of the last century, when morosité became the country’s hallmark and bad-tempered populism surged on both left and right. What was lacking was a disrupter able to capitalise on the disenchantment, a charismatic politician able to open the way to what the writer Michel Houellebecq called “group therapy”, and let France feel good about itself once more.

Enter Mr Macron, a former presidential adviser and short-lived minister under François Hollande. His message, that it was time for a new start and time to empower citizens, came with the reassurance that a lighter-touch state would continue to provide a protective framework. Mr Macron was the perfect champion of this potentially alarming manifesto, a fast-moving interloper in touch with the new century. His En Marche! movement aroused grassroots enthusiasm but, while putting himself forward as the symbol of modernising change, he gained strength and credibility from his experience as a member of the elite within the very system he was out to upset.

Ms Pedder’s fluently written and well-plotted book is clear-eyed about Mr Macron’s flaws and the potential pitfalls ahead of him. He may be enjoying success in the first stage of his bloodless domestic revolution by streamlining the French labour code and taking on the railway unions, but he will face more testing times when it comes to reforming pensions and making serious cuts in state spending. His ambitions for Europe appear to have underestimated German caution. His wooing of Mr Trump was upended at the G7 summit in Quebec. His belief that his vision of progress will turn back destructive populism has yet to be vindicated outside France. And his self-confidence can easily come over as an arrogance that could tip over into hubris.

Such difficulties will not stop the president who, though very different in many ways, carries distinct echoes of Charles de Gaulle. Like the general, he is single-minded in pursuing his chosen course once he has made up his mind. Like his predecessor of six decades ago, Mr Macron prides himself on being able to cope with storms and knows how to maintain an unflappable façade; he is said not to sweat. A believer in perpetual motion in office, he is set on returning the presidency to its quasi-monarchical status—or perhaps even more, given that he once compared the occupant of the Élysée Palace to Jupiter (he has subsequently denied that he sees himself as the god of gods).

So far, things have gone as well as could be expected with the first reforms, the stirrings of economic revival, a sprouting of technology startups and a continuing lack of coherent opposition. Mr Macron’s poll ratings are reasonable; most of the new bevy of parliamentarians elected to the presidential majority seem to be knuckling under to legislative discipline. But the question remains as to whether the disrupter of 2017 is made for the long haul—able, as Ms Pedder puts it, to use “a glorious epic moment, for a grander purpose”. Or is he the product of a particular set of circumstances that will evaporate by the time he stands for re-election in 2022? Either way, he will be a president who matters more than most for some years to come.

JONATHAN FENBY*

*Our policy is to identify the reviewer of any book by or about someone closely connected with The Economist. Jonathan Fenby is director of European Political Research at the TS Lombard service and the author of “The History of Modern France” and “The General: Charles de Gaulle and The France He Saved”.