OPINION: Revolution is in the air in France and 'paternalistic' Macron cannot calm it
It’s over. Time to move on. There will be goodies for you. Promise. In his message broadcast to the French people on Monday night, President Emmanuel Macron sounded like a father driving his wailing child home from the dentist, writes John Lichfield.
Yes, the pension reform is painful. But it was necessary. It’s all over now. Dry those tears. End the tantrums. We can move on to things you will enjoy.
Higher wages. Sharing of profits. Better schools. No queues in emergency wards. Expulsion of failed asylum seekers. Something for the Left of you and something for the Right.
Will it work? Probably not. The nationwide fit of shrieking and toy-throwing, some sincere, some synthetic and hypocritical, will continue for quite a while.
It is unlikely that President Macron will have much to show his wailing child at the end of the 100-day recovery period, ending on July 14th, that he promised on Monday night.
Superficially, this is just French politics as usual. France demands “change”. It opposes all changes.
France complains that it is slipping down the global league table of prosperity, influence and functioning public services. It refuses to accept that it should work longer or tax itself less to compete with its rivals and neighbours.
Superficially, we have been here before. All presidents for the last three decades have faced strikes and street protests against modest social reforms.
Some were withdrawn. Others such at retirement at 62 instead of 60 are now the “acquis” (status quo) which the new generation of protesters defend.
Others, such as the simplification of hiring and firing and reduction in pay-roll taxes, help to explain why joblessness in France has plunged from 9 percent to 7 percent in the last six years. Those reforms, started by François Hollande and continued by Macron, were opposed at the time by strikes, marches and scattered violence.
Surprise, surprise, no-one mentions unemployment much anymore.
But there has been something qualitatively different – almost existentially different – about the pensions reform protests of the last three months. The language is different. There is an edge of hysteria in the allegations that the modest move in the pension age from 62 to 64 is “brutal”, “unjust” and “autocratic”.
The government’s use of its special powers under Article 49.3 of the constitution to push through the reform was predictable and widely predicted. It has happened 100 times before in the last 65 years.
This time 49.3 was presented as “an assault on democracy , “a trampling of the will of the people”, an act of “violence which called for a violent response”.
Close to my village in Normandy someone has erected a cardboard sign with the scrawled message in felt-tip pen: “49.3 = 1789”. Revolution is in the air again, in the Gilets Jaunes rural heartlands, not just among the self-pleased, black-clad, young bourgeois anti-capitalists who smash shop windows and burn cars in Rennes or Lyon or Paris.
Compare and contrast this hysteria (I believe that the word is justified) with the unemotional language of the Constitutional Council’s ruling last week. The nine “sages” declared that the pension reform was reasonable and constitutional – and so was the manner of its enactment.
The Council said that the increase in the official retirement age to 64 by 2030 would “assure the financial balance of the (state pension system) and guarantee its survival in the light of the increase in life expectancy”. The government’s use of several special powers to hurry and then force a decision was “inhabitual” but not contrary to the Constitution.
Normally the pronouncements of The Sages are accepted without much comment. On this occasion, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical Left, said that it was a “violent” decision which would encourage a violent response.
Macron’s decision to sign the pension reform within hours of the Council’s decision was presented, even by moderate union leaders, as a “denial of democracy” and an “autocratic” refusal to listen to the voice of the people.
All of this can be dismissed as the sour grapes of bad losers. Mélenchon, who has been stirring violence for weeks, has little right to talk of democracy.
But those who believe – like me – that the pension reform is modest and justified must also now accept that something is happening here which goes beyond the recent French cycle of reform and protest. It is something that also goes beyond rampant Macronphobia of many French people.
Solenn de Royer in a column in Le Monde said that this has become a revolt not just against pension reform, but against the technocratic, top-down, diluted democracy instituted by Charles de Gaulle 60 years ago. There is much truth in that.
Emmanuel Macron claimed in 2017 to be a suited revolutionary. He was an impatient young man with many good ideas but he was no revolutionary. He was – and he was seen by many to be – the epitome of the kind of technocrat who used to stand behind presidents. Now HE was the president.
The father-knows-best tone of his 15 minute address last night – “dry your tears; lets move on” – placed Macron firmly in the Fifth Republic tradition of paternalistic semi-democracy. In the age of social media and the collapse of old political allegiances, that no longer works very well.
The Gilets Jaunes movement of 2018-9 already revealed a formless hunger for a new, more direct kind of popular control of decision-making. It also exposed how dangerous that desire can be.
If the French people want to have more direct control of their lives, they also need to move on. They need to grow out of the child, or teenage-like, modes of thinking which the top-down Fifth Republic has encouraged.
“The state (like mummy and daddy) is all-responsible and usually wrong. The state should do more but we should pay less taxes.”
In sum, the crisis over pension reform is both absurd and profound. It is both Macron’s failure and France’s failure.
A drum-beat is already starting suggesting that Marine Le Pe and the Far Right will reap the benefits in 2027. That is the subject for another column.
But I believe that, in four years’ time, the country may be more likely to revert to the unthreatening immobilism of the Chirac years: someone who promises to “listen” and then delivers little.
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Yes, the pension reform is painful. But it was necessary. It’s all over now. Dry those tears. End the tantrums. We can move on to things you will enjoy.
Higher wages. Sharing of profits. Better schools. No queues in emergency wards. Expulsion of failed asylum seekers. Something for the Left of you and something for the Right.
Will it work? Probably not. The nationwide fit of shrieking and toy-throwing, some sincere, some synthetic and hypocritical, will continue for quite a while.
It is unlikely that President Macron will have much to show his wailing child at the end of the 100-day recovery period, ending on July 14th, that he promised on Monday night.
Superficially, this is just French politics as usual. France demands “change”. It opposes all changes.
France complains that it is slipping down the global league table of prosperity, influence and functioning public services. It refuses to accept that it should work longer or tax itself less to compete with its rivals and neighbours.
Superficially, we have been here before. All presidents for the last three decades have faced strikes and street protests against modest social reforms.
Some were withdrawn. Others such at retirement at 62 instead of 60 are now the “acquis” (status quo) which the new generation of protesters defend.
Others, such as the simplification of hiring and firing and reduction in pay-roll taxes, help to explain why joblessness in France has plunged from 9 percent to 7 percent in the last six years. Those reforms, started by François Hollande and continued by Macron, were opposed at the time by strikes, marches and scattered violence.
Surprise, surprise, no-one mentions unemployment much anymore.
But there has been something qualitatively different – almost existentially different – about the pensions reform protests of the last three months. The language is different. There is an edge of hysteria in the allegations that the modest move in the pension age from 62 to 64 is “brutal”, “unjust” and “autocratic”.
The government’s use of its special powers under Article 49.3 of the constitution to push through the reform was predictable and widely predicted. It has happened 100 times before in the last 65 years.
This time 49.3 was presented as “an assault on democracy , “a trampling of the will of the people”, an act of “violence which called for a violent response”.
Close to my village in Normandy someone has erected a cardboard sign with the scrawled message in felt-tip pen: “49.3 = 1789”. Revolution is in the air again, in the Gilets Jaunes rural heartlands, not just among the self-pleased, black-clad, young bourgeois anti-capitalists who smash shop windows and burn cars in Rennes or Lyon or Paris.
Compare and contrast this hysteria (I believe that the word is justified) with the unemotional language of the Constitutional Council’s ruling last week. The nine “sages” declared that the pension reform was reasonable and constitutional – and so was the manner of its enactment.
The Council said that the increase in the official retirement age to 64 by 2030 would “assure the financial balance of the (state pension system) and guarantee its survival in the light of the increase in life expectancy”. The government’s use of several special powers to hurry and then force a decision was “inhabitual” but not contrary to the Constitution.
Normally the pronouncements of The Sages are accepted without much comment. On this occasion, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical Left, said that it was a “violent” decision which would encourage a violent response.
Macron’s decision to sign the pension reform within hours of the Council’s decision was presented, even by moderate union leaders, as a “denial of democracy” and an “autocratic” refusal to listen to the voice of the people.
All of this can be dismissed as the sour grapes of bad losers. Mélenchon, who has been stirring violence for weeks, has little right to talk of democracy.
But those who believe – like me – that the pension reform is modest and justified must also now accept that something is happening here which goes beyond the recent French cycle of reform and protest. It is something that also goes beyond rampant Macronphobia of many French people.
Solenn de Royer in a column in Le Monde said that this has become a revolt not just against pension reform, but against the technocratic, top-down, diluted democracy instituted by Charles de Gaulle 60 years ago. There is much truth in that.
Emmanuel Macron claimed in 2017 to be a suited revolutionary. He was an impatient young man with many good ideas but he was no revolutionary. He was – and he was seen by many to be – the epitome of the kind of technocrat who used to stand behind presidents. Now HE was the president.
The father-knows-best tone of his 15 minute address last night – “dry your tears; lets move on” – placed Macron firmly in the Fifth Republic tradition of paternalistic semi-democracy. In the age of social media and the collapse of old political allegiances, that no longer works very well.
The Gilets Jaunes movement of 2018-9 already revealed a formless hunger for a new, more direct kind of popular control of decision-making. It also exposed how dangerous that desire can be.
If the French people want to have more direct control of their lives, they also need to move on. They need to grow out of the child, or teenage-like, modes of thinking which the top-down Fifth Republic has encouraged.
“The state (like mummy and daddy) is all-responsible and usually wrong. The state should do more but we should pay less taxes.”
In sum, the crisis over pension reform is both absurd and profound. It is both Macron’s failure and France’s failure.
A drum-beat is already starting suggesting that Marine Le Pe and the Far Right will reap the benefits in 2027. That is the subject for another column.
But I believe that, in four years’ time, the country may be more likely to revert to the unthreatening immobilism of the Chirac years: someone who promises to “listen” and then delivers little.
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