France’s re-elected President Emmanuel Macron wants to govern differently

CLASPING HANDS and squeezing shoulders, Emmanuel Macron lingered for hours amid a crowd of well-wishers in a little market town at the foot of the Pyrenees, just days after he was re-elected. At the end of a divisive campaign, the French president’s trip was designed as a show of healing and listening. The technocratic slayer of populism could still connect with the people, the visit implied, and the second-term president would now listen to them more, too. It was time, Mr Macron declared, for reconciliation, and a “new method” of consultative government: “We can’t resolve everything from là-haut (on high).”