Does Emmanuel Macron's win signal the end of populism in Europe? Not likely

Analysis by Jane Merrick

Updated 1140 GMT (1940 HKT) May 8, 2017

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Source: CNN

Le Pen's young voters: 'Great things are coming' 02:51

Story highlights

• Macron's decisive victory suggests that centrism never really went away
• But with Le Pen, previously fringe views have become mainstream

(CNN)Minutes into his acceptance speech, Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the "anger, anxiety and doubt" among people who voted for his rival Marine Le Pen. By addressing her supporters so directly and taking their concerns so seriously, the new French president demonstrated that he knows his historic triumph has not crushed populism -- it has merely kept it at bay.

Macron's margin of victory, 66% to 34%, was decisive. His achievement, from the creation of a new party to the Elysee within a year, is extraordinary. Centrism, in all its forms -- internationalism, liberalism, Europeanism, Blairism, social democracy -- is back, it seems. In fact, it never really went away -- it's just that Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the US were such unexpected, disruptive and spectacular victories for populist causes that their noise drowned out the centrist background music.

In March, a liberal beat a right-wing populist in the Netherlands. After Macron's victory, Germany's foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, tweeted that France "is and will remain in the middle and in the heart of Europe," underlining the two-nation, pro-EU alliance that has been under threat from Brexit and Le Pen.

Denis MacShane, former UK minister for Europe and author of a biography of François Mitterrand, France's longest-serving President, described Macron's win as "the biggest victory for Europe in two decades" that showed "France is willing to resist the waves of populist nationalist extremism of the right and the Podemos-Chavista left, represented