Four months ago — before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — there was everything to play for in the French presidential election, with rivals jostling to prevent Emmanuel Macron from winning a second term in the Elysée at the ballot box in April.
Eric Zemmour, the television talk-show polemicist, was mounting a serious challenge to Marine Le Pen as the champion of the French extreme right. Valérie Pécresse was set to win the primary for the conservative Les Républicains party and to be briefly rated by opinion polls as the biggest threat to Macron.
But today, France is where it was a year ago, with voters likely to have a choice between Macron and Le Pen in the second round on April 24 after handing them the most votes in the first round two weeks earlier. Such an outcome would repeat the contest won by the “neither right nor left” Macron five years ago.