CANADA boasts 44-year-old Justin Trudeau; Italy has Matteo Renzi; even America’s Barack Obama became president in his 40s, promising change. When a dynamic 38-year-old launches a new political movement in France, however, he is dismissed as an upstart. This, at least, is the reaction of many party barons to the launch last week by Emmanuel Macron, the economy minister, of “En Marche!” (On the Move!), a cross-party movement designed to “unblock” France. They are right to judge him an untested outsider—and will try to keep him one. But Mr Macron has captured the broader French imagination, and his ideas deserve a hearing.

In many respects, Mr Macron’s effort to reboot France by creating a consensus for change that reaches from the centre-left to centre-right looks doomed. He has never been elected, and is not a member of President François Hollande’s Socialist Party. He thus has no party base, no political machine and no grassroots network. Much of the French left considers his past as an investment banker unforgivable. He is (probably) too loyal to run against Mr Hollande, if the unpopular president defies reason and seeks re-election next year. Were Mr Hollande instead to retire quietly, Mr Macron would face a crowd of other presidential hopefuls, including a fellow moderniser, the prime minister, Manuel Valls.

Yet there is a yearning in France, as elsewhere, for a different sort of politics. The left-right divide is increasingly seen as the source of obstructive petty politicking rather than a reflection of distinct ideological identity. Outdoor sit-in movements, born in Spain and now spreading in France, show exasperation with tired party machines. The march of populist nationalism from the fringes of respectability to the centre of voting intentions demands new thinking by mainstream parties about how it can best be disarmed. The right response to all this in France surely cannot be the prospect in 2017 of the same line-up as in 2012: Mr Hollande on the left, Nicolas Sarkozy on the centre-right and Marine Le Pen on the nationalist right.

Politics 2.0

Mr Macron’s high poll ratings suggest that he appeals to the politically disillusioned. Two of his efforts merit particular attention. One is the desire to reach across the left-right divide. This is partly an attempt to overcome the resistance to change entrenched by a polarised system. But it also hints at a possible future shift. Europe’s globally minded parties of left and right often have more in common, on matters of trade and immigration, for instance, than either do with the protectionist, identity politics of the nationalist right. For now, tribal instincts, backed by institutional machinery, still prop up the old split. But France has already learned, in regional elections, that the left and right cannot always fight each other, as well as Ms Le Pen.

His other effort is about how to adapt progressive thinking for the 21st-century economy. Unlike many others on the French left, Mr Macron argues that digital disruption can be a progressive force if it opens up opportunities for, say, the 25% of young French people who are unemployed. But it also demands a broader rethink about how systems of welfare and job protection, forged in an era of jobs-for-life, can adapt to Uber-isation. What do rules about working time mean, for example, when salaried employment is no longer the norm?

More than 40 years ago Michel Crozier, a French sociologist, published “The Blocked Society”, deploring his country’s difficulties in adapting to a changing world. It is far from clear that Mr Macron will manage to build his movement into a force that can overcome such blockages. Maybe all he can hope for is to put out uncomfortable ideas, and nudge the debate forward. European social democracy is not flush with fresh thinkers right now. France dismisses its own at its peril.