THE tumbrels are rolling again in France, and the crowd is restless. One by one, political leaders of the ancien régime, who had confidently been preparing to face each other at the presidential election this spring, have been carted off to the guillotine on a wave of revanchist fury. France is in the grip of what might be called “dégagisme”: a popular urge to hurl out any leader tainted by elected office, establishment politics or insider privilege. Less clear is which sort of outsider French voters want instead.

This impulse is by no means unique to France. Casualties of an anti-establishment rage are still nursing their wounds in America, Britain, Poland and other liberal democracies. But the list of French victims of this howl of anger is particularly star-studded. In recent months it has included a sitting Socialist president (François Hollande, who read the mood and declined to seek re-election), a former centre-right president (Nicolas Sarkozy, who lost his party’s primary) and two ex-prime ministers (Alain Juppé and Manuel Valls, both also dispatched in a primary).

The hostility seems indiscriminate. The French have cast aside the insipid and the showy, the sanguine and the sombre, old-timers on the left and the right. Other victims could yet fall. Another former prime minister, François Fillon, the centre-right candidate, is clinging on by a thread after it emerged that he employed his wife for years as his parliamentary assistant, despite little evidence that she did any work. A former beneficiary of this preference for the insurgent, the dour and tweedy Mr Fillon was the outsider in his party primary last November before sweeping to victory. Today he has fallen from presidential favourite to third place in the polls. It could yet be that a candidate from an established party—Mr Fillon or, at a stretch, Benoît Hamon, the fresh-faced Socialist nominee—pulls through in the end. But, for now, the upswell of dégagisme has instead lifted two political outsiders. One is Marine Le Pen, leader of the nationalist Front National (FN), who tops first-round voting intentions (though not polls for the run-off). The other is Emmanuel Macron, who is running as an independent, campaigning for votes on both the left and right under the “progressive” banner of En Marche! (On the Move!).

In most respects, each of these candidates is the antithesis of the other. Ms Le Pen calls herself a “patriot”, who wants to give “preference” to French nationals, escape the clutches of the European Union, withdraw France from the euro, raise protectionist tariffs, curb immigration and reinstate welfare privileges. Mr Macron, by contrast, is a zealous champion of the EU, favouring open borders, global trade, technical innovation and the adaptation of France’s welfare system to a less stable future job market. She is the favourite among blue-collar workers; he draws disproportionate support from university graduates. She has climbed to the top of the polls on the back of dire warnings of an immigrant invasion and Islamist infiltration; he has charmed his way to become the bookmakers’ favourite with a sharp mind and upbeat outlook. Their antipathy is unambiguous. Ms Le Pen calls him an “ultra-liberal” globalist, a sort of citizen of nowhere, who is “surfing on air”. Mr Macron says that she pretends to speak “for the people”, but in truth speaks only for her clan. To underline their rivalry, on a recent weekend the pair could even be found holding rallies in the same city, Lyon.

If the pair share a common feature, it is the perception that they are both outsiders: newcomers intent on breaking the grip that old-time parties of the left and right have held on executive power in France since the Fifth Republic was established in 1958, and on forcing a realignment of party politics. This is not a new idea, even in modern history. Pierre Poujade rallied shopkeepers and artisans against the elite in 1956, and won his party 52 deputies. The difference is that this time power is, possibly, within their grasp. A year ago the notion that either Ms Le Pen or Mr Macron stood a serious chance of winning the presidency belonged to the realm of fantasy. French codes and conventions favour candidates from established parties, with local networks and parliamentary weight, and a long history of electoral campaigning. Mr Hollande first stood for election in 1981, when Mr Macron was just three years old. His predecessor, Mr Sarkozy, was first elected in 1977, when Ms Le Pen was still in primary school. Ms Le Pen has never held executive office. Mr Macron has never run for election.

Sans-culottes? Hardly

Yet in reality Ms Le Pen and Mr Macron are decidedly odd outsiders. She is part of a political dynasty, founded by her father, Jean-Marie, who set up the FN in 1972. A European Parliament deputy, Ms Le Pen is accused by its watchdog of misuse of the public payroll. She claims to speak “in the name of the people”, her campaign slogan, yet was raised in a ridge-top mansion overlooking Paris, in one of the capital’s swankiest suburbs. Mr Macron, from a medical family, is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the elite civil-service college. He worked as an investment banker, then adviser to Mr Hollande at the Elysée, before becoming his economy minister. Unconnected ingénus they are not.

Perhaps what Ms Le Pen and Mr Macron really represent, in their diametrically opposite way, is the nature of the political outsider in an age of disillusion. The authentic version (such as Germany’s Angela Merkel) is a rarity. Today’s successful insurgents need not lack fortune or connections (as Donald Trump demonstrates). They need not lack experience, either (Ms Le Pen has been an MEP since 2004). Rather, an insurgent must appear fresh, sound in touch with new fears and ordinary concerns, and break convention—whether to disturbing, or thrilling, effect. French mainstream-party candidates may yet resist the forces of dégagisme. If not, voters could face the stark choice between two untested, and wholly divergent, outsiders: Ms Le Pen’s nationalist, xenophobic version, and the liberal-minded, internationalist brand of the dynamic young Mr Macron.