“THE RIGHT IS BACK,” Valérie Pécresse solemnly announced after securing the conservatives’ nomination in the French presidential election slated for April.

She now stands as the last hope for a party in deep trouble. France’s conventional right: " The Republicans", never redeemed from its ruinous defeat in 2017, when (for the first time in nearly 60 years) it failed to qualify for the final round of a presidential race. But after Pécresse's unexpected victory over four other contenders in a primary last month and she becoming the centre right’s first-ever female presidential candidate, the party’s chances have dramatically improved.

The 54-year-old career politician describes herself as “two-thirds (Angela) Merkel and one-third (Margaret) Thatcher”. I am a woman who consults, decides and acts,” she says.

Five years back, Macron used his youth to present himself as the embodiment of change. Now, with a female nominee, the Republicans hope to show they eventually got the memo on gender equality.

Her being chosen as the conservative candidate "is a sign of modernity in a country that has had 25 male presidents," said Geoffroy Didier, her campaign’s director.

Her biggest task now is to patch up a party that’s split between moderates and hard-liners on issues such as immigration, the place of Islam in French society, and economic policies. She must also bring back the many Republican voters that, have been siphoned away by Macron on one hand and by the far-right on the other.

Pécresse is also nodding to the far right on France-EU relations, an issue her party has long maintained a certain ambiguity for. Last fall, amid a row between Brussels and Poland over whether EU law trumps member states’ constitutions, Pécresse backed the supremacy of national "constitutional identities".

She manages to get people with shared values but very different sensibilities to work together which brightens her chances against others but French presidential campaigns are notoriously unpredictable, so it's still a "long road less travelled" for Valerie before she makes history!