Hello, my name's David Runderman, and this is Talking Politics. Today, I'm joined by Shaheen Valle.

Yeah, pretty proud of myself. And Chris Bickerton. So I woke up slightly feverish this morning,

but because of my deep devotion to the podcast,

I clampered out of bed. And we're talking about France, the forthcoming presidential election,

and the meaning of Emmanuel Macron. Talking politics has been brought to you for the last

five years in partnership with the London Review of Books,

who are mourning the end of the podcast the only way they know how, with one last unbeatable subscription offer for Talking Politics listeners.

Get six issues, that's three months of the LRB, where I'll be continuing to write about politics and more for just six pounds by using the URL

Lrb.me slash talk six. That's Lrb.me slash talk six.

I'm on the Ethernet, so I'm not even using my phone. Sorry, sorry, that's completely my fault.

I'm going to quit and then see if that makes it better.

Yeah, that's okay? Okay, should we give it one more go?

Thanks for your patience, Shaheen. Sorry about this.

Before we start, I should say that we were hoping that Helen Thompson would join us for this conversation. And ironically, as we come to the end of this podcast, the tech has finally let us down.

Helen isn't here this week, as I'll tell you at the end, she will be with us next week.

Shahin Vallet is a senior fellow at the German Council for Foreign Relations.

We've talked to him before about France. He worked once upon a time with Emmanuel Macron,

and we have over the years had many conversations with Chris Bickerton about the state of European

politics and France and Italy in particular. Shaheen, we're a couple of months out from the first round of the presidential election and

anything can happen in two months. There's a lot going on in the world. But as things stand

now, do you see any plausible scenario in which Emmanuel Macron does not end up getting

re-elected as president of France? Well, I see only one scenario in which that could occur.

...