Everyone knows it’s Macron’s fault: he keeps telling us so. Each time something goes seriously wrong for the government in France, he pops up to slip on the sackcloth and ashes that he hopes will be rewarded with another dose of forgiveness from those he has variously accused of being “lazy”, “nothing”, “illiterates”, benefit scroungers who cost a “crazy amount of cash”, or people “who think France is some sort of joint-ownership union”.
Macron had not even been in power for a full year, when Alexandre Benalla, his personal minder (the French term barbouze, which has a touch more thuggery to it, is better), was caught out beating up demonstrators on May Day 2018, and the newspapers gave banner headlines to the President’s mock confession: “The only one responsible for this affair is me, and me alone.”
When the Gilets jaunes burst on the scene in November 2018, just a year and half ago, he was gracious enough to go on our tv screens mid-way between the first weekends of mass mobilisation and admit: “I have not succeeded in reconciling the French people with their leaders.” He was being interviewed from the bowels of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle as it was ploughing through the seas. “Our fellow citizens want three things today: that we take them into consideration, that we protect them and that we provide them with solutions. No declarations. Solutions.”
