ONE by one, liberal democracies are waking up to find their certainties trampled by the march of close-the-borders populism. First came the vote for Brexit, then Donald Trump’s election as America’s next president. Now France is bracing itself for a momentous presidential vote in 2017 in which the stakes could not be higher—not just for the well-being of France, but for the future of Europe itself.

Of the two spots in the run-off next May, one will almost certainly go to Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front (FN). That is turning the French primaries campaign into a nerve-racking contest: a race for the candidate best placed to defeat Ms Le Pen (see article). She has vowed to pull France out of the euro and to hold a “Frexit” referendum on the country’s membership of the European Union. The EU can survive, however creakily, the loss of Britain. But were France to abandon the club, it would spell the chaotic end of a project that, with its single market and its day-to-day political engagement, has sustained prosperity and undergirded peace. It is essential that French voters have a decent alternative to Ms Le Pen.

The good news is that several are on offer. On the left, Emmanuel Macron, the young former Socialist economy minister, said on November 16th that he is running for the presidency. He has thought harder than most about France’s need to adapt if it is to cope with technological disruption. His pitch is to voters on both the left and the right who share an unapologetically pro-European, liberal outlook. But his chances of getting to the second round are not great. He is standing as an independent, and thus will have to fight for the left’s vote against the official Socialist candidate: probably either François Hollande, if the spectacularly unpopular president decides to seek re-election, or Manuel Valls, his more centrist prime minister.

The centre-right’s options are more plausible. Seven Republican candidates are standing in their party’s two-round primary on November 20th and 27th, among them a former president (Nicolas Sarkozy) and two former prime ministers (Alain Juppé and François Fillon). Astonishingly, the three leading candidates all agree with Mr Macron on the need for a liberalising fix to France’s struggling economy. They promise to loosen rules on working time, modernise the welfare system, raise the retirement age and curb public spending, which consumes 57% of GDP, second only to Finland among OECD countries.

A reason such ideas are circulating is that, within Europe, France has consistently pursued statist and at times protectionist drawbridge-up policies—and has hence suffered low growth and high unemployment. But liberalisation is not popular. France’s Socialist government struggled to push through even a modest labour reform this year and was crippled in the process. For the leading Republicans to promise to keep people at their desks until the age of 65, give up the 35-hour week or abolish the wealth tax risks antagonising the very voters they will need to win over if they are to defeat the FN.

This is why any candidate aspiring to beat Ms Le Pen must evince trustworthiness. That rules out Mr Sarkozy, with his record of a volatile presidency, troublesome cases of alleged corruption and opportunist moves to steal Ms Le Pen’s anti-immigration ideas. The front-runner, Mr Juppé, brings a more measured temperament and a greater appeal to voters on the left—polls suggest that both he and Mr Sarkozy could beat Ms Le Pen, but that his margin of victory would be ten points greater. Mr Fillon, whose economic programme is the most ambitious among Republicans, is making a late charge.

The trouble is that none of them answers the country’s yearning for political renewal. Mr Sarkozy and Mr Fillon, who served for five years as his prime minister, are both open to the charge that they did not do last time what each promises to do next. Meanwhile, a Juppé-Le Pen run-off, pitting the establishment insider against the populist insurgent, would carry the haunting echo of the battle between Hillary Clinton and Mr Trump. The 71-year-old Mr Juppé first went into politics when the Oval Office belonged to Jimmy Carter.

Le Penned-in

In such a high-stakes race, the readiness of leading candidates to promote liberal policies is laudable. They are surely right in believing that the best antidote to populism is not to pander to it, but to offer an explicit and full-blooded defence of open trade, Europe and ethnic diversity.

Who has the best chance of defeating Ms Le Pen will depend in large part on who can credibly offer rejuvenation—if not in person then at least in policies that harness globalisation as a force for prosperity while dealing with its problems. That mainstream parties have no space for the likes of Mr Macron says much about the ossification of French politics. It will be a tragedy if Ms Le Pen turns out to be the freshest candidate on offer. France, the country that gave birth to modern European integration, should not be the one to destroy it.