I found Sudhir Hazareesingh’s essay insightful, informative and learned, while not as valuable as his Spiked interview:

http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/the-french-mind/19507#.WPoToWe1vIW

Mr. Hazareesingh’s repeating of the notion that Macron is, somehow, ‘Progressive’ puts my estimate of his expertise on the French political/historical/philosophical panorama  into a kind of limbo. Macron, by any estimation, is the idiosyncratic French expression of Neo-Liberalism Lite: that in America are/were The New Democrats, via the Democratic Leadership Council, and the New Labour of Tony Blair. Not to speak of political poser Arianna Huffington’s Friedmanism, as somehow being ‘Progressive’! Hers was one of the many front organizations, that pitched successfully the notion of the ‘Hope and Change’ sloganeering, that devolved into an unstinting advocacy by Obama, for the Corporatist TTP and TTIP. Such is the wayward definition of the ‘Progressive’ in the ‘West’.

Macron believes in the myth of French Exceptionalism i.e. the leader of The Enlightenment, and also partakes of the political nostalgia for national greatness, that is  the Le Pen trademark, as her political platform widens as the election draws near.

Committed Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/52a1d67c-2500-11e7-a34a-538b4cb30025