ON A wooded bend of the Seine, as it winds its way downstream from Paris, sits the fine town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Houseboats are moored at the stone quay. Halyards frap against masts. Container barges chug past on their way to the coast at Le Havre. The town’s embrace of the river that joins it both to France’s capital and to the port town in Normandy hints at another sort of connection, too. For it embodies an intellectual current that flows to the new president, Emmanuel Macron, as well as his prime minister, Edouard Philippe.

Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is best known as the place that launched Michel Rocard (pictured), a former Socialist prime minister, who was the town’s mayor in 1977-94. His ambition to create a moderate centre-left set him for years on a collision course with François Mitterrand, a former Socialist president, who was wedded to an anti-capitalist doctrine. Mitterrand won that battle, becoming president twice and sinking Rocard. If the former mayor of Conflans never realised his aspirations, though, the new French president whom he inspired is succeeding in ways he could hardly have dared imagine.

That Mr Macron was marked by Rocard is not in doubt. When the ex-prime minister died last July, Mr Macron described him as “one of the great figures of the 20th century”, and called his efforts to remodel the centre-left a “precursor” to what he dreamed of achieving. His description of Rocard as a “rare blend” of a statesman and a “convinced, extremely free and committed” politician sounded like a model for himself. Mr Macron met Rocard shortly after graduating from the prestigious Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). They became close; Rocard was a guest at Mr Macron’s wedding. After his death, Mr Macron vowed to continue his legacy.

Both men were educated at ENA, as is much of the French elite. Like Rocard in his time, Mr Macron argues that politics needs to overcome old ideological and partisan divides; he built his political movement, originally called En Marche! (“On the Move!”) and since redubbed La République en Marche! (LRM), to that end. As a consensus-seeking prime minister, in 1988-91, Rocard governed without a majority, and repeatedly sought the backing of the centre-right to pass legislation.

Like Rocard, Mr Macron unapologetically backs enterprise and wealth creation, as well as redistribution. In his time, Rocard rejected the economic nationalisation espoused by Mitterrand, who allied the Socialists with the Communist Party. He struggled against his party’s Marxist wing, preferring what he called the deuxième gauche (“second left”), a pragmatic centre-left based on a mix of market economics and efficient public services. Mr Macron may be a liberal centrist, but his roots, like Rocard’s, are on the centre-left.

Finally, both embrace decentralisation. Rocard built his version of municipal socialism around self-governing local committees. Mr Macron founded En Marche! as a citizen-based movement rather than a top-down political party. On a walk around Conflans, Mickaël Littiere, who runs one of the local En Marche! chapters, points out the office of a neighbourhood committee Rocard set up, still in use. When Mr Littiere held his first En Marche! meeting in a bar by the quay last September, he recalls with a laugh, only one person turned up. At the final presidential vote in May, 74% of the town voted for Mr Macron.