Emmanuel Macron is welcomed to Bahrain by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa on Tuesday Credit BENOIT TESSIER/POOL/EPA/Shutterstock James Crisp Europe Editor Show biography James has covered the EU and Europe for The Telegraph since 2017.

He was Brussels correspondent during the Brexit negotiations and lived in the Belgian capital for more than a decade 2:04pm BST As France picks up the pieces after a weekend of riots Emmanuel Macron will sit down to a lavish state dinner more than 3,000 miles away in Qatar.

The French president, who was due to meet the emir of Qatar on Tuesday during a Gulf tour to secure fuel supplies, has rarely seemed so distant from the people on city streets strewn with smashed glass. He leaves behind a power vacuum that Marine Le Pen is determined to fill after elections in April which Mr Macron cannot fight after serving two terms. The unrest has brought the National Rally (RN) leader closer to becoming president of France at the fourth time of asking.

Ms Le Pen has cast herself as the law-and-order candidate and her rivals as impotent against or complicit in the destruction wreaked on French cities.

Marine Le Pen’s address to the nation was presidential, even as she is forced to campaign with an ankle tag YouTube Ironically, she is campaigning with an ankle tag after her conviction for embezzlement of EU funds.

But even Mr Macron’s allies admit the protests have helped her cause. Nathalie Loiseau, his former Europe minister, said the carnage “benefits the far-Right”. “They are circling around the violence like vultures,” the senior European Parliament member added.

Mr Macron has been a lame duck since his disastrous decision to call snap National Assembly elections in 2024. Ms Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) emerged as the single biggest party and three Macron-backed governments fell in less than one year.

Now Ms Le Pen, whom Mr Macron defeated at the last presidential election, is the favourite to take the Élysée as he enters the chaotic endgame of his presidency.

The snap elections cost him his majority and his ability to force through controversial reforms on pensions and retirement needed to reduce France’s massive public debt which is worth nearly 120 per cent of GDP.

Its hung parliament is struggling to pass a budget proposing cuts designed to make £46bn in savings.

Meanwhile, a student movement protesting against poor school conditions and budget cuts morphed into wider anger at the cost of living and fuel prices, which escalated into riots and looting at the weekend.

A student protest about poor school conditons morphed into riots and looting over the weekend Jack Taylor Ms Le Pen has spent years detoxifying the RN, which her father, the notorious Jean-Marie Le Pen, a Holocaust denier, founded. Mr Macron and his centrist heirs have used the hard-Right RN’s lack of government experience and extremist origins against it.

But with France in flames and its politics paralysed, voters will be asking how things could possibly be worse under a Le Pen’s presidency.

Mr Macron spoke of his “anger and shame” over the riots before jetting off on his Middle East tour. His address to the nation fell flat. He offered no concrete action to wrest back control of the streets, such as a state of emergency. Only later was a curfew finally announced Mr Macron, pictured in the UAE, spoke of ‘anger and shame’ before jetting off on his Middle East tour but offered no concrete action AFP/BENOIT TESSIER Édouard Phillipe, a former prime minister under Mr Macron, is the centrists’ best hope to defeat Ms Le Pen in April but his campaign is at risk of stalling badly.

“I would have preferred decisions and initiatives to restore order,” he wrote in an effort to distance himself from Mr Macron. “This country needs someone in command.”Ms Le Pen’s speech after the riots oozed the confidence of a president-in-waiting. She condemned the Macron administration as “running on fumes, exhausted, disorientated” and lacking any credibility or authority.

She was careful to point out there were legitimate concerns over the cost of living. This subject plays to her strengths, with the RN long having railed against high fuel prices.

But she hit out at the “hooligans” looting the high streets and shops in France, which she made sure to associate with France’s divided Left.

Macronion centrism hollowed out the old French parties of government on the centre-Left and Right and mainstreamed the hard-Right of Ms Le Pen and the hard-Left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon The leader of France Unbowed is winning the struggle with Raphaël Glucksmann, who is on the centre-Left, to be the Left’s standard-bearer in April.

While the riots have burnished Ms Le Pen’s presidential credentials, they have tarnished Mr Mélenchon’s. France Unbowed supported the school protests leading up to the riots at the weekend. Party members took to the blockades and criticised alleged police violence.

There have been calls to ban France Unbowed and a Leftist militant has been arrested over the fire that engulfed Limoges’ historic town hall.

Limoges’ town hall in flames AFP/PASCAL LACHENAUD Mr Mélenchon must find a way to support the protests and distance himself from the carnage that allows Ms Le Pen to paint him as the biggest threat facing France. He has a narrow lead in the polls over Mr Philippe and Mr Glucksmann to make the second round of the presidential election.

Traditionally, French voters form a popular front to keep the hard Right from power, but that evaporates if Ms Le Pen’s opponent is from the hard Left.

Polls suggest that Ms Le Pen would easily defeat Mr Mélenchon in the second-round run-off and, by a closer margin, beat Mr Philippe.

Ms Le Pen is now even stronger, presenting herself as the salvation for a France betrayed by both its government and the Left.

Her face now appears on RN campaign materials with the telling slogan: “A Peaceful France”. President Le Pen is unlikely to keep that campaign promise.

She will face the same challenges over the cost of living and a public debt so huge it could bring down the eurozone And her election will unite the Left in taking to the streets, bringing with them the risk of yet more violence and disorder.