Recently, he gave voice to the question himself. It was last Thursday at 8:30 a.m. and Emmanuel Macron, dressed in a teal suit coat and navy blue tie, found himself at a podium in the Grand Palais in Paris. "Why am I actually a Socialist?" he asked his audience.
For a former investment banker who was recently assigned with the unenviable task of reforming his country as economics minister, it is an excellent question.
Macron's audience last Thursday morning was made up of perhaps 70 business leaders in an event organized by an economics magazine. Most of them were just as elegantly dressed as Macron himself, and they chuckled with amusement at his question.
But instead of answering his own question, the minister for economics, industry and information technology unfurled his far-reaching vision for a reinvigorated France. He spoke of the common welfare, which needed to once again take precedence over individual interests. And he underscored his exposition with a quote from the Socialist reformer Jean Jaurès from the year 1887.
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