Emmanuel Macron – The centrist cannot hold

Origin Story

Podmasters

Society & Culture, News, News Commentary, History

4.8 • 655 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Emmanuel Macron is one of the most fascinating and infuriating figures in 21st century politics. Seven years ago, the philosopher-statesman shredded France’s status quo by seizing the presidency at the helm of a brand new centrist party. But his achievements, at home and abroad, have not lived up to his grand visions and his summer election gamble has left him weaker than ever. Ian tells Dorian a dramatic story of idealism, ambition and hubris, explaining what Macron’s strengths and flaws reveal about the changing face of centrism, the battle with the far right and what makes French politics so very French. Sacre bleu! Origin Story will be live at the Tabernacle in London on the 7th of November for a special post-US election show. Tickets here. Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon. Reading List Revolution by Emmanuel Macron, Scribe 2017 Emmanuel Macron: Revolution Francais by Sophie Pedder, Bloomsbury 2018 Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, welcome to another between season mini episode of Origin Story.
0:13.0	I'm Dori Olinsky.
0:14.0	And I'm Ian Dund.
0:15.0	And this is the podcast where we unpack a person, an idea, an event, an institution that shapes political discourse today.
0:23.7	And this time, Ian is taking the lead, and he's been learning all about an om, Don Le News,
0:31.3	Emmanuel McCaunt.
0:34.0	For a start, did you have any particular feelings about him before we started, I mean, we started looking into him for the centristism book?
0:40.2	Sure.
0:40.5	As your feelings about him changed, are they only different now?
0:43.4	Yeah, maybe I didn't really understand where his sort of philosophy came from.
0:48.6	And maybe I didn't realize that he had a philosophy because one of the problems that we come across in the history of centristism is whether people actually have a really, you know, strong view of politics in the world,
0:59.9	or whether they're just like, well, if I go down the middle, then I will win power.
1:05.5	You know what I mean? The more cynical view, and of course there are centrists who have
1:09.1	got very strong beliefs, and then there are centrists that appear to have almost none. So I'm impressed that there was more substance
1:15.8	to Macron, but that, of course, does not mean that he doesn't make very bad decisions and have many
1:22.7	flaws. And of course, while we were writing the book, things went all a bit tits up for him with that kind of, you know, that snap parliamentary election, which could have gone very badly and in fact has created a big mess.
1:35.1	But yeah, no, I just felt like, of course, when someone's in the news, you often don't learn that much unless you dig out a kind of, you know, there'll be some good long read in the Guardian or prospect or whatever.
1:45.3	Well, they actually explain like, well, this is who this person is and this is why they believe
1:48.8	what they believe.
1:50.1	But a lot of the time, you just keep hearing the name in the news, and particularly since it's
1:52.9	always like centrist, centrist, and you think, oh, well, that's who Macron is.
1:56.8	He's just a guy, a guy in the middle. And so I was more impressed by him while still reserving the rights to be very critical
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Podmasters, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Podmasters and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.