This is the year when the campaign for the 2027 presidential election really gets under way.
Indeed, if Emmanuel Macron takes the advice of former prime minister François Fillon, dispensed in an interview with Le Figaro shortly before Christmas, and resigns, the excitement could start even sooner.
As the land lies at the moment, there appears to be a clear favourite for the contest, whenever it comes: Jordan Bardella.
The general assumption is that Mr Bardella will be the candidate for the Rassemblement National, with the chances of Marine Le Pen’s ban from seeking public office being overturned regarded as minimal.
Whether the French establishment, which is heavily controlled by the political left, finds a means to engineer Mr Bardella’s exclusion from the contest remains to be seen. The way French politics has gone in the last decade or so, anything is possible.
Sarkozy's endorsement
One person who seems to have decided that Mr Bardella is the future of France is the only man to be an alumnus of both the Elysée Palace and La Santé prison, Nicolas Sarkozy.
‘Sarko’, out of jail after just three weeks of his sentence for corruption, has compared Mr Bardella and his programme with Jacques Chirac and what his party (in whose administration Sarko served) stood for 20 years ago.
Sarko made it quite clear that he saw nothing unduly controversial about the RN’s policies, and that the urgent priority for France was that the right unites and defeats the forces of leftism (and, indeed, it appears also centrism) come the presidential election.
As things stand, the opposition forces continue to do an exemplary job of defeating themselves.
Cynics argue that Sarko’s sucking up to Mr Bardella is driven by his desire for a pardon.
He continues to deny he has ever done anything wrong, despite having been convicted and sent to prison, and a pardon would be la cerise sur le gâteau of his determination to rehabilitate himself and his crashed reputation.
To most objective observers (including this one) Sarko had what was coming to him, and is exceptionally lucky to have got out of La Santé as swiftly as he did.
Lack of baggage
Mr Bardella, who is so electable not least because he does not carry the baggage of being a member of the Le Pen dynasty, needs to associate himself with a corrupt and delusional jailbird like he needs the proverbial hole in the head.
But it is not merely the fact he is not called ‘Le Pen’ that makes Mr Bardella such a red-hot favourite.
So much is wrong with France, and all established political forces have manifestly failed to do anything about it; so it is time to look to those who have never had a sniff of power.
Talking recently to a few highly-informed French friends, they all seem to accept that a Bardella victory is a foregone conclusion, not least because the RN way is (whatever parallels Sarko might draw with the recent past) the only way not to have been extensively tried and to have been seen to fail.
The biggest mistake Mr Bardella could make would be to agree with them that he has effectively won, and all that remains is to collect the trophy.
If he really is going to become president – and therefore avoid the second round defeat traditional to his party as a result of everyone else ganging up on their candidate – he has to fight every day of his campaign over the next 16 months as though his life depended upon it; victory still has to be earned.
That will only come by offering the French people a set of proposals that would see France governed radically different from the way it has been at any time during the Fifth Republic (whatever Sarko may claim about the Chirac era), and by winning their trust.
Sense of betrayal
Too many French voters have the perception, rightly or wrongly, that they have been betrayed time and again; Mr Bardella has to persuade them he is different.
This time, too, it looks as though everyone else might not gang up on him: not necessarily because they do not want to, but because they lack the coherence to do so.
The left is hopelessly divided; the centre-right have yet to settle on a candidate, but there is little chance that he, or she, could come anywhere near Mr Bardella in the first round.
It is, indeed, quite possible that he or she would not even survive to fight him in the run-off.
Perceptions of what much of the French media - and almost the entire French establishment - call the ‘far right’ have changed dramatically among the French electorate since 2022.
Their general failure to understand French voters is not the least reason why those voters are now steadily rejecting traditional politics and parties and pursuing more radical options.
Opponents of the RN dismiss their strategy as something called ‘populism’, by which they mean they are following public opinion rather than leading it.
The fact is that in a modern world of mass media, you can ignore public opinion only for so long.
Mr Bardella’s opportunity comes largely from the inadequate government since President Macron made the mistake of calling parliamentary elections in the summer of 2024.
Matters appeared to have reached their nadir last year, when Sébastien Lecornu first resigned as prime minister, and was then reappointed to lead an administration that could easily fall at any moment.
The consequences of this unstable government are to be seen everywhere, not least in an economy in steep decline, sporadic civil unrest and the general feeling that there is much worse to come.
If worse does come, there will be only one beneficiary, and it will not be the old centrist or leftist parties.
