You haven't really won, Emmanuel Macron

The real winner of the French election is Marine Le Pen, writes Faisal Al Yafai. What happened in France was not a populist wave but a populist tide – and it will not be easy to resist.

French president-elect Emmanuel Macron waves to the crowd as he delivers a speech at the Pyramid at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Patrick Kovarik / AFP

Speaking over the boos of his supporters, France's new president Emmanuel Macron struck a concilitary note in his victory speech. He would, he said, address a few words to those who had voted for his rival Marine Le Pen.

“They have today expressed rage, loss and sometimes conviction," he said. "I will ensure they no longer have a reason to vote for an extremist position.”

Mr Macron was wise to put forward such a position. But it may be beyond his political skills. The populist wave that has taken the French far-right to its highest point ever will not be easy to push back.

The real story wasn't at Mr Macron's victory speech. It came a few minutes earlier, when Ms Le Pen conceded. The contrast could not have been clearer.

Mr Macron looked stunned, even subdued. Ms Le Pen, on the other hand, was already looking forward to the legislative elections next month and vowing to be Mr Macron's real opposition. The tide, she realises, is with her.

For Marine Le Pen is the real winner of this election. The European far-right has been normalised, to the point where she could appear on a national television debate, present herself as the champion of working French people – and be believed by nearly 11 million voters. A profound shift has taken place.

Those who think that Mr Macron has finally seen off the challenge of the far right have very short memories.

Merely five months ago, almost the same situation occurred in the Austrian presidential election.

There, as in France, an independent not backed by either of the two main political parties reached the final run-off and faced a far-right candidate.

In the final vote – closely watched across Europe for signs of the populist wave breaking over another democracy – the independent Alexander van der Bellen won by 53 per cent against 46 per cent for his far-right rival Norbert Hofer. The political elite celebrated. The far-right had been stopped.

Stopped? On 46 per cent of the vote?

The same celebrations took place two months ago in the Netherlands, when Mark Rutte beat Geert Wilders to make his party the largest in the parliament, thereby keeping the far-right Mr Wilders out of the ruling coalition.

Mr Rutte said the forces of “the wrong kind of populism” had been halted. Mr van der Bellen said the same thing.

In due course, Mr Macron will doubtless express a similar sentiment. But they are all wrong.

What is happening is not a populist wave but a populist tide. Rather than appear out of nowhere and sweep all before it, this populist tide keeps coming in, a little higher each year, a little farther in each election. Gradually, the political centre finds itself, like the metaphorical man on the shore, hemmed in on all sides.

In France, this movement away from the centre can be seen by looking at the ballot blanc, the blank white votes that are cast as votes for no-one, an anti-establishment cri de coeur.

Last weekend, four million white votes were cast, the highest percentage since the founding of the Fifth Republic. These are the missing millions of France, willing to engage in the political process, but finding no one they feel represents them.

The danger is, gradually, many of them are inching towards the far right.

In the second round, Ms Le Pen picked up votes from the centre-right candidate Francois Fillon. But at least a third of those who voted for the left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round – a significant percentage of whom were young – abstained.

A picture then is emerging in France, as it is emerging in other western democracies. There are two groups who feel left out: those who are older, poorer and more traditional, who are gravitating towards the far right, and those who are younger and aspirational, who are gravitating towards the far left. The centre is being squeezed.

Traditional political elites don't see this as an insurmountable problem. Facing down the far-right monster is a position that suits them, because it forces the electorate to clean up their mistakes. But a closer look at the voting numbers suggests that that may be a mistaken bet.

An analysis of French voters by the Financial Times found that those who leaned left were more likely to vote for Mr Macron – until it came to those on the far-left, who swung back to the anti-establishment Ms Le Pen. The same anti-establishment sentiment was noted among the Brexit vote, too.

This is the real danger. When Ms Le Pen identified a division between globalists and patriots, she was not wrong. But it is proving easier to push Europeans into one of those groups than the other.

The Front National is not the danger, with its history of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. Nor is it demagogues like Geert Wilders. The real danger is in the emergence of a far-right figure who sounds like a centrist.

Addressing this danger will entail a recognition in Europe that the tide of the far right and the far left will not be halted by politics as usual, by voting for, as Marine Le Pen called it, continuity. Like King Canute, Emmanuel Macron cannot hold back the tide. But at least Canute knew what he was up against.

On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai