Macron has luck - but he chooses his friends and enemies with care
The French president is young and smart, writes Ruth Dudley Edwards, and he has thought his reform strategy through
As the international swooning over the young, vigorous and cool French President Emmanuel Macron continues almost unabated, a dissident voice has piped up that will play well for this (so far) very lucky politician.
Macron, said the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, "is destroying France" and "was placed in the presidency to act like a hitman for the financial oligarchy to destroy the social rights of the people".
Maduro took over as president after the death in March 2013 of Hugo Chavez (one of President Higgins' heroes), and continued with his catastrophic Marxist economic and social policies. Inflation is running at over 6,000pc, the bolivar is 99.99pc down against the dollar, starving citizens are fleeing in their hundreds of thousands, creating a massive refugee crisis for neighbouring countries, and Maduro has rejected foreign aid and banned or imprisoned political opponents.
