French ex-pats meet, celebrate Macron win at Madison Pub

Choose your spin on the French election but the victory of political novice Emmanuel Macron (about 65 per cent in the vote) in Sunday’s run-off is seen as either a new wave of European commitment or a leap into the unknown. Macron is compared carelessly with Justin Trudeau but that seems superficial. Trudeau (his father’s son) is a member of an established political party with seats in a Westminster-style parliament. Macron is a solo flyer — no lineage, no party and a Republican system of government with a president and a premier. Time will tell what he can do with that.