‘The French love politics but hate politicians,’ Emmanuel Macron confided a year before he was elected president in 2017. Having just appointed his fourth prime minister in two years, and with only 17 per cent of approval rating in the opinion polls, Emmanuel Macron has almost become a symbol of this very French paradox.

Remarkably, far from feeling dejected by Prime Minister François Bayrou’s defeat in parliament and consequent resignation on Monday, President Macron looks in great shape and comes across as defiant. Two sessions of kickboxing a week and a taste for adversity seem to do wonder for his spirits. Always in the thick of it, just like Napoleon Bonaparte. Besides, his passion for geopolitics and international affairs keep him sharp and on high alert. Since 2017 he has worked tirelessly to make Europe a strategic powerhouse. And if the French refuse to see the achievements of their president on the international stage, that’s too bad for them.

However, France’s new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is Macron’s last card. Interestingly, by appointing Lecornu, his faithful 39-year-old defence minister, President Macron has chosen the least Macronist of Macronists. Lecornu, a young Gaullist who comes from the Right, may have always been loyal to Macron, but his views on French society and how to talk to the French are strikingly different. Mayor of Vernon, Normandy at the age of 27 and then president of the Eure region, he was appointed junior minister in Macron’s first government in 2017. He has since climbed up the governmental ladder, from the environment ministry to that of overseas territories before firmly occupying the position of defence minister in four consecutive governments.

While president Macron loves nothing more than philosophical concepts, Lecornu prefers a collective narrative, one fed by national cohesion and a love of the concrete. Lecornu belongs to a French Right that does not exist anymore: Gaullist and social minded. The man also shows bygone qualities: discretion. He keeps away from social networks and the media, speaking only when he has something to say.

When he took over from François Bayrou on Tuesday, his speech lasted two minutes and 45 seconds, a record. Concision is his style. ‘I think we need to tell our compatriots that we can do this if we stick together… We must find a way to put an end to this double disconnection. This growing gap between the country’s political life and the reality on the ground is becoming a serious concern… We will need to change – to be more creative, at times more technical, and more serious in the way we engage with our political opponents… Changes are needed – not merely in tone or method, but in substance.’

Lecornu will need to hit the ground running and prove to the French, who are in a state of heightened anxiety and anger, that he is his own man and no Macron boy, and that he can reach out to all oppositions. Arriving in power on the day of the Bloquons Tout (Let’s Block Everything) Protest, he had to rush to the Interior Ministry to check on the damage caused by this leaderless movement spurred by Far Left and Far Right groupuscules. If the protesters didn’t manage to paralyse the country, their sheer number, around 200,000 throughout France (twice what was expected), shows that it could be the beginning of something bigger. And with 80 per cent of the police forces mobilised to contain them, it is difficult to imagine how authorities will deal with much larger unruly crowds. A detail is also of concern: a hundred lycées were blocked by their own pupils, a fact that never bodes well in France. Next week, a good old general strike and demonstration called for by trade unions on 18 September will almost be greeted with relief. Trade unions usually play by the democratic rulebook: they have leaders, they have demands, and they tell the police where they are demonstrating; they also have their own security services that work alongside the police to maintain peace and order.

Besides security, there is the central question of tackling French debt (€3.3 trillion and 114 per cent of GDP) and public deficit (5.8 per cent of GDP), a question that cost Bayrou his job. Lecornu will no doubt present to parliament a watered-down budget plan made of more taxes for the rich and fewer spending cuts, in order to appease Marine Le Pen, the Socialists and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Lecornu knows that the French fiscal fervour for taxation is often motivated more by vindictiveness than by economics, but he will have to bow to this very French obsession if he wants his government to last. Beggars can’t be choosers: to pass a budget, in any shape or form, would be progress.

Good luck to Sébastien Lecornu: after all, failure is certain only for those who never dare to try.