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 (on high).”From the leader who clambered up to grand heights to begin his presidency in 2017, this marks something of a turnaround. The centrist, it seems, has taken the full measure of what is at stake during what is probably his final term. (The constitution allows only two consecutive ones.) For Mr Macron’s challenge is typical of those facing liberal democrats across Europe as they seek to hold the centre against the forces of populism. And France, the euro zone’s second-biggest economy, is a test case that matters. By 2027, if Mr Macron holds on to his majority at parliamentary elections next month, the then 49-year-old may well leave behind him a decade of stable, competent government at the heart of Europe. In France, a country outsiders like to think is always on the brink of collapse, this would be quite a result.