Welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Isabel Hardman.

On this week's episode, we'll be discussing whether Macron is losing his gloss,

asking if the Brexit talks are heading in the right direction,

and recommending how to get the best out of the Edinburgh Festival.

First, it's been just over two months since Emmanuel Macron became president of France

and already cracks are starting to show.

He was swept into the Elysset Palace

on a sea of young voters who wanted to reject

Marine Le Pen and the National Front,

but they seemed to be beginning to turn

on the centrist former banker

who they reluctantly championed.

So, says Gavin Mortimer in this week's magazine, where he laments the new president's vanity.

And he joins me now from Paris, along with the political journalist Marie LeCont.

So Gavin, in your piece, you draw a comparison between Macronism and Blairism.

Can you just explain that a little bit more for listeners?

They're both trying to rebrand their country after

what's gone before. In Blair's case, the grey years of John Major. And in Macron's case,

the disastrous, shambolic five years of Francois Hollande and his socialist governments,

really French prestige on the international state in particular took a real battering end. There was French bashing, the Anglo-Saxons mercilessly mocked. The French way of doing things actually, in a way that began with humour. The men actually turned rather nasty. So he wants to rebrand, reinvigorate France in the way that Blair tried in those 20 years ago

with Kool Britannia.

Marie, is that working, are young people in France buying this new brand?

...