Macron – and the west – are now prey to France's toxic populism

France is both beautiful and brutally bleak. It is a country studded with towns and rural vistas that take your breath away, but pockmarked with districts of soulless, desolate concrete, especially in the suburbs of its cities, the banlieues. It’s as though French planners and architects, in their embrace of modernity, lost touch with what it means to be human. It has been an important trigger for a toxic brew of Islamophobia and wider cultural despair.

- Will Hutton

The political consequences, now playing themselves out, will ricochet around Europe and the west. The presidential elections this spring will be dominated by the right, overtly mouthing implacable opposition to immigration that even Nigel Farage, who shares similar sentiments, dares not use so openly in Britain.

French socialism has collapsed before the onslaught, while the mainstream right candidate – Valérie Pécresse – is compelled to shore up her position by echoing the same tropes. The pace is being set by presidential candidate and TV celebrity Éric Zemmour, who burst on to the scene late last year. He is a hard line Islamophobe who argues that France is about to be overrun by Islam, dignified as “the great replacement”. He is joined by the longstanding representative of the nativist right, Marine Le Pen, who has been saying similar things, echoing her father, for years. Extraordinarily, together they command just over 30% of opinion poll support.

President Emmanuel Macron, seen only five years ago as representing a new, self-confident majoritarian blend of liberal social democracy and liberal conservatism, is only just ahead of them both, polling around 24%. It is hardly a ringing endorsement of his years in office or his aim to transcend left and right.