Anne Applebaum, in her book Gulag, recounts an old Soviet joke about the trepidation felt by Ivan and Masha upon hearing a nocturnal knock at the door. Fearing that the NKVD, the dreaded Soviet secret police, has come for them, they open fearfully – only to breathe a sigh of relief when they learn that it is fact only the neighbours, come to let them know that the building is on fire.
The collective relief felt following Emmanuel Macron’s surprisingly decisive victory yesterday rather resembles the Muscovite couple’s reaction. Macron beat back Marine Le Pen’s Front National by a margin surpassed in modern French history only by her father’s 2002 humiliation. But the upwards progression of the far-right is now a permanent feature of the French political landscape. In the 2015 regional elections, the FN attracted 6.8m votes, its highest ever absolute total; this time it won a cool 10.6m.
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