THE centre did hold after all. The election of Emmanuel Macron as President of France has huge implications for Brexit and for Scotland. His decisive victory over the National Front’s Marine Le Pen is not just a defeat for the far right, though it clearly is that. Macron confirms two important trends. The first is that the march of the new post-liberal right, that began with Brexit and spread to America with Donald Trump, has been halted – for now – at the English Channel. The right-wing populist Geert Wilders in the Netherlands was a loser in March as was Austria’s Norbert Hofer in December. In Germany, which goes to the polls in September, the Alternative For Deutschland is losing ground rapidly. French voters looked at the alternative for France, and said a decisive “Non!”.

The second is that the European Union, far from falling apart in the aftershock of Brexit, is getting more united by the week. Mr Macron is a mercurial political character, with few fixed policies, rather like Tony Blair, but he is undoubtedly a pro-European who campaigned EU flag next to the French one on his platform. He really believes in the European Union – indeed, where Ms Le Pen is a French nationalist, Mr Macron is a Euro nationalist. He described Brexit as a “crime” and is not about to do Theresa May any favours. He regards the British Prime Minister, with her hostile rhetoric about Brussels, as a kind of Downton Abbey version of Ms Le Pen. The fact that our most prominent Brexiter, Ukip’s Nigel Farage campaigned for her didn’t help.