It was a scene that could have come straight out of a political television drama, or one of the thrillers in which Edouard Philippe has given readers a knowing peek along France’s corridors of power.

Fifteen years ago at a rally of the centre-right UMP party the then adviser to Alain Juppé, party leader, barred interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy from the stage. Mr Philippe rightly suspected that Mr Sarkozy wanted to steal the show. The result was a stand-off that almost ended in a fight. “Don’t you ever do this to me again,” Mr Sarkozy warned the tall young civil servant, lunging forward and hitting Mr Philippe in the chest. Years later Mr Philippe would concede that he “might have done something that had displeased” Mr Sarkozy.

This week French political observers have been reminded of those combative scenes as they try to make sense of Mr Philippe’s appointment as prime minister at the head of the first government of