Has Macron fixed France’s political mess?

But how much time, and to what end?

The president has recently sought to present himself as an aloof, almost regal figure, merely interested in safeguarding national stability.

But he continues to wade into parliamentary politics, insisting, high-handedly, that neither the far left nor far right can have any role or influence whatsoever in government.

Emmanuel Macron still has two and a half more years in office.

Will he be forced out before then by street protests? Will he see his hard-won pension reforms overturned?

Will another “clarifying” parliamentary election be required next year? Could the Fifth Republic’s constitution require amending, or even replacing altogether?

Or might France’s leader, a former banker with an appetite for the high-wire act, find a way, once again, to outsmart his rivals and to win back the support of an increasingly sceptical public?

“I doubt it. He may steady things, but no more than that,” concluded Isabelle Lasserre.

Significantly, the main beneficiary of this current crisis is, almost certainly, the one person President Macron has sought most to thwart.

He has spent years trying to ensure that Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally, now the country’s largest single party, never gets close to real power.

“For now, she is the biggest winner from this crisis. She lost the elections, but she increased the size of her (parliamentary) group by 1.5 times. She has more money. She has everything to set up the next generation of her party,” concluded Benjamin Morel.

He predicted, if Emmanuel Macron’s true legacy proved to be a future electoral victory for National Rally, that chaos would follow.

“We can find temporary solutions (today)… But if the RN wins an absolute majority, we will enter into a conflict that will no longer be in parliament, but on the streets.”