France braces for a post-Macron era; experts expect a book deal, a podcast, and possibly a cameo in an art film
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Cyprus, April 2026: The Valediction No One Requested
PARIS — Emmanuel Macron, seated among schoolchildren in a sunny garden in Nicosia, Cyprus, delivered what may be the most gently self-important retirement announcement in the history of Western democracy. Asked by a small child how he became president, Macron explained that it was a matter of passion, not a career plan, and that he would not be doing politics again after 2027.
The children listened carefully. One is said to have raised her hand and asked if they could do maths now. The child’s instincts were sound.
A Career Defined by Claiming It Was Never a Career Plan
Macron’s political biography is a masterpiece of accidental ambition. He was not involved in politics before, he told the Cypriot schoolchildren. He merely advised presidents. Then became a minister. Then founded a political movement. Then ran for president and won. Twice. None of this, he insists with a straight face, was a career plan. In France this level of unplanned achievement is called talent brut. In England it would be called absolutely insufferable. Both assessments are correct.
What Happens When Macron Leaves?
France’s 2027 presidential election is already being described as the most consequential in a generation, which is what French commentators say about every election while drinking the same Beaujolais they drank at the last one. Marine Le Pen remains the great looming figure of French right-wing politics. The left remains a coalition of parties that agree on nothing except that capitalism is bad, lunch should be longer, and whoever is speaking should speak for considerably longer than necessary.
Macron, freed from the constraints of office, will presumably write a book. The working title, sources suggest, might run to something like Passion, Not a Plan: How I Accidentally Ran France for Ten Years While Everyone Complained. A Netflix documentary is considered certain. A TED Talk is inevitable. A cameo in a French art film is statistically mandatory, probably as a brooding figure sitting alone at a cafe in the rain, which is both cinematic and on-brand.
Bohiney has tracked the French political cycle with appropriate reverence. Bloomberg’s profile notes that at 48, Macron would be younger than many American presidents at their best, which is simultaneously reassuring and depressing depending on which country you live in.
France Prepares, With Characteristic Shrug
The French public, when surveyed, expressed the full spectrum of emotions available to a nation that has survived Napoleon, two world wars, and the introduction of the McDonald’s McBaguette: mild interest, moderate fatigue, and a firm conviction that whatever comes next will require striking about three weeks before it actually happens. France has survived worse. It will survive whatever Macron’s memoir is called. It will be required reading in Sciences Po by 2029.
More Gallic absurdism: The Daily Mash | NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
