London: French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron has claimed London for France, urging a packed rally of expat compatriots to return to their homeland – and bring the UK's bankers with them.
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But on the same day he declared London France's "sixth city", back home polls showed him losing his position as favourite to occupy the Elysee Palace after the April election.
Macron came to London under a cloud, after a week of controversy damaged his campaign.
The latest polls, released as he was about to go on stage in London on Tuesday evening, show a sharp drop in his support. Some now have Republican Francois Fillon overtaking Macron as the favourite to reach the second run-off round of voting in May, where they would go up against far-right Marine Le Pen.
Macron began his London visit with a meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing Street.
Leaving the meeting, he told the media he wanted France to attract "banks, talents, academics, researchers and so on" away from Brexit Britain. He also wanted expats to return.
There are 300,000 French expats in the UK – two-thirds in London alone – and many left to escape the socialist governments' high-tax regime. They are all eligible to vote in the presidential election.
On Tuesday night thousands queued around the block to see Macron speak, at a hall in the heart of Westminster that has previously hosted the first ever United Nations meeting, as well as a Kanye West concert.
In a 90-minute speech delivered without notes or autocue, Macron told the crowd he wanted to remove France's "cultural barriers… where failure is forbidden but we don't like success".
"What is going on with Brexit?" he asked. "What is going on with Donald Trump?"
He said they were symptoms of a "revolt of the middle class".
He wanted a "political revolution", he said, trying to make his inexperience an asset by arguing "political experience is political inefficacy".
He wanted to "simplify the life of entrepreneurs" with a streamlined tax system, he said, and improve education for the young and underprivileged.
He told the crowd – who had been armed by the En Marche campaign with more EU flags than French ones – that he loved and defended Europe, which both helped the French to succeed, and protected them from geopolitical instability.
"Je suis Europeen," he said – though he also said the EU needed reform.
"Don't leave criticism of the EU to those who hate it," he said.
Brexit had been "the wrong choice" for Britain, he said.
The evening ended with a standing ovation, and a rather muted rendition of La Marseillaise.
The leader of the new En Marche movement has been trying to straddle the political centre, to attract the centre-right away from scandal-tainted Francois Fillon, and the centre-left from idealistic socialist Benoit Hamon.
But he angered the right on a visit to Algeria last week, where he called France's colonial past a crime against humanity, then disappointed pro-gay marriage supporters by saying they had "humiliated" opponents during the 2013 gay marriage campaign.
Macron was already under attack for being slow to reveal his policy manifesto. And he may face another blow on Wednesday when a centrist rival, Francois Bayrou, will declare whether he will join the race.
Front National leader Marine Le Pen is still the firm frontrunner in the polls, though they have her losing to either Macron or Fillon in the second round of voting.
This week Le Pen attracted new controversy in Lebanon where she refused to wear a headscarf in a meeting with a senior Muslim figure, causing it to be cancelled.
