Over to France, where plucky young centrist Emmanuel Macron has beat fascist Marine Le Pen to the presidency.

First of all, phew.

This will be a huge sigh of relief for minorities whose human rights Le Pen threatened during the campaign.

She wanted to ban the right of Muslim women to wear the hijab, stop immigration and restrict the rights of migrants to claim benefits.

But the vote was close. Macron winning the French presidency within what looks like just over 10pc of the vote against an actual fascist is, well, terrifying.

A lot of the blame for that can be put on Macron.

His own leadership hasn’t had any answers to the pressures ordinary people are feeling, and that’s what pulled so many towards the far-right.

Macron’s government has also helped to mainstream Le Pen’s toxic ideas.

Macron’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, went as far as criticising Le Pen as being “soft” on Muslims.

As one French Muslim told the OpenDemocracy website, choosing between Macron and Le Pen was like “choosing between the plague and cholera”.

All over the world, people are struggling. Food and fuel prices are soaring while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Those in mainstream politics aren’t offering any real answers to that, so people are looking elsewhere.

On the far-right, that usually means creating an argument that we’re all worse off because of migrants, Muslims, Jews, trade unionists, LGBTQ people or anyone else who’s “different”.

On the far-left are those arguing that it’s due to the bosses and governments who put profit before people’s needs.

It’s telling that the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon came within a whisker of making the final round of voting in France.

Business-as-usual politics has failed – but the future’s what we make of it.