There’s been a lot of talk about how France’s President-Elect Emmanuel Macron is an outsider. And in one sense, it is quite obviously true. He left the Socialists and formed his own En Marche! party (complete with Jeb! exclamation mark), a party that currently has no representation in the National Assembly, something that will doubtless change after legislative elections in June. He ran for president as his own man, albeit with the support of an increasing slice of the establishment behind him, firstly, as it became clear (ahead of the first round of voting) that the official Socialist candidate was a dud, and then (ahead of the second) as the sole remaining champion of ‘Republican’ France against Le Pen.

On the other hand, as outsiders go, Macron is pretty inside, a former government minister, a lucrative stint with an investment bank, a graduate of the elite National School of Administration (ENA). ENA is the finishing school for those set to rise to the top in France’s civil service and, for that matter, elsewhere.

But was there something else?

There’s a splendid word in Italian, dietrologia. It translates roughly as the study of what lies behind, and it’s a useful word in Italy, a country with plenty of conspiracy theories, and not a few conspiracies either.

So here, writing in The Spectator in February is Patrick Marnham:

Macron has not just divided the Socialists, he has replaced them. So how has this apparently isolated and underfunded individual managed all this in such a short time? It is clear that Macron has powerful supporters behind the scenes, and a clue may lie in the little-discussed fact that some years ago he was identified as a member of ‘les Gracques’ — a discreet centre-left pressure group loosely staffed by influential chief executives and civil service mandarins. They are pro-market socialists who long ago gave up on the Socialist party. Many are fellow ‘énarques’ (graduates of ENA) and every step of Macron’s career could have been directed by them. Spotted as a brilliant and charming student, Macron could first have been launched into the prestigious state Finance Inspectorate, then switched into Rothschild to gain business experience (and wealthy support) and then placed like a time bomb in Hollande’s outer office, where he ticked away until he could be moved into the heart of the Valls government. Last August he finally exploded into action at the perfect moment to cause maximum damage to Hollande, Valls and the entire Socialist presidential election campaign. Macron’s rise bears all the hallmarks of a classic ENA undercover operation, a fundamental part of the énarques’ stock-in-trade and one in which the country’s leading bureaucrats are cynically trained.

Make of it what you will.

Adjusts tin foil.