EN24: Yellow vests: only 10% of French people still say they support them

 “The movement remains a pole of protest which continues to be regenerated by new frustrations, however, underlines Jerôme Fourquet, director at Ifop. To the historical ones who rebelled against the increase in taxes on fuel and denounced the gap between the people and the elites, were added the directors of nightclubs affected by the economic impact of the health crisis or the anti-masks . The yellow vests crystallize all the anger which itself is constantly renewed. What does not change, however, is that the Vests are recruited mainly from the extreme parties (15% vote for Jean-Luc Melenchon, 19% for Marine Le Pen).

The yellow vests also suffer from their inability to agree on a common political platform. “It is true that the Yellow Vests have not succeeded in becoming a French“ Five Star ”, Fourquet analysis. In Italy, this movement had gained momentum thanks to Bepe Grillo, in whom he had found incarnation. Jean-Marie Bigard, who for a while believed to bring the movement to France, was exfiltrated from a parade this Saturday. The Ifop poll also points out that only 32% of those who say they are close to the yellow vests could consider voting for the comedian. We are far from the plebiscite. And now, it is Professor Didier Raoult who, according to Jerôme Fourquet, would be popular with them.

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UnHerd: Welcome to the new Springtime of the Peoples

This may have some elements of exaggeration. It is difficult to see what protestors in Catalonia and Iraq have in common; the former are restricting political ties to ethnic identity, the latter are expanding them. But even when distinct, they march together, and ultimately the uprisings of 2019 have a common thread that links them, tied together by technological change, economic pressure, and the shifting axis of power from West to East. [...]

Today the dialectic of revolution is very different. Rather than starting from the heavens and trying to bring them down to earth, protestors everywhere fill the streets to seek redress for a specific grievance: the extradition law in Hong Kong, the fuel tax in France, the price increase of the Santiago Metro ticket in Chile (the 30 pesos which cannot but remind us of the 30 pieces of silver for which Judas betrayed Jesus). [...]

And yet the specific grievance is never a cause. To see it as such would be a serious mistake, one that authorities all over the world are prone to make, but which we can and should avoid. In all these demonstrations ,the protest is an occasion, a beginning, an incitement, a vehicle for a much deeper urge. Once the protests start, they take on a life of their own. Sharper collective awareness and a growing list of political demands are a consequence rather than a cause. [...]

And the Western vision of the future is receding, something particularly obvious in India. The consensus around a Western, secular model for the country has collapsed, but how can Indians agree on a new path to be built from scratch? Cultural and political independence have an irresistible appeal, but with independence comes a life of danger.

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openDemocracy: The people’s rebellion, or why a showman became president of Ukraine

This, then, is a rebellious popular vote against corrupt politics-as-usual by people who are largely non-political. In this sense, there’s a certain resonance with the Gilets Jaunes movement – and like their French counterparts, Zelensky voters do not have any political unity or ideological coherence. Their basic common denominator is negation. The demands and expectations of Zelensky voters are heterogeneous and even contradictory, ranging from putting an end to the war and oligarchy to increasing wages, lowering prices and household gas tariffs. But in the best traditions of 1968, they are demanding the “impossible” – just social conditions that are equal for all. And 73% means a clear refusal of any kind of negotiations or possible compromise with the current ruling class so that it could remain in power. [...]

While Zelensky voters may vary widely in their claims about what they voted for, they found common ground in what they voted against. First of all, they voted against the war. And this is not a blind denial of the reality of warfare and occupation – this vote was against the war as a political and economic system of relations between the state and the society that has emerged in Ukraine during the recent years. Russian military intervention and occupation has poisoned the atmosphere inside Ukraine, creating the conditions for political reaction in the form of bans on certain social media platforms, attacks on anti-corruption NGOs, the beating and killing of activists, racist pogroms and so on. [...]

Zelensky isn’t a right-winger or even a conservative, but rather a libertarian in a very broad sense, while right-wing populism is exactly what Ukraine has experienced under Poroshenko’s rule at its purest. Throughout most of his presidency, Poroshenko has addressed the Ukrainian public predominantly in a discourse of narrow-minded ethnic nationalism borrowed from Ukraine’s far-right Svoboda party. He ended up campaigning for president with the medieval slogan “Army! Language! Faith!” – in reference to laws protecting the Ukrainan language, military reforms and the creation of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In recent years, various extreme right and neo-Nazi organisations have been legitimised in the public sphere as “activists” and “freedom fighters”, receiving the informal backing of the security services and law enforcement. They have remained unpunished for their committed hate crimes.

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Politico: Belgium’s democratic experiment

Nowhere else in the world will everyday citizens be so consistently involved in shaping the future of their community. In times of massive, widespread distrust of party politics, German-speaking Belgians will be empowered to put the issues they care about on the agenda, to discuss potential solutions, and to monitor the follow-up of their recommendations as they pass through parliament and government. Politicians, in turn, will be able to tap independent citizens’ panels to deliberate over thorny political issues. [...]

As manifested by Brexit, the Yellow Jacket protests in France and climate activists across Europe, citizens no longer feel trusted or taken seriously. Ticking a box on a ballot paper every five years no longer feels like enough. And some topics are simply too toxic to be solved by party politics alone — or too complex to put to a Yes or No referendum. The Belgian experiment is an opportunity to take seriously the idea of involving citizens in our institutions before political discontent tears down our democratic processes. [...]

Its Bürgerrat (Citizens’ Council), which will consist of 24 members who each serve 18 months, will set the agenda. Its members will define the questions, but not give the answers. They will instead organize regular Bürgerversammlungen (citizens’ assemblies) made up of at most 50 people who will meet for three weekends over three months. These panels will be allowed to invite experts to help them learn about the topic and draft independent policy proposals. Parliament will be bound to organizing two hearings with the assembly’s participants and then to respond to their recommendations.

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Politico: Macron responds to Yellow Jackets with tax cuts and reform plans

In his speech, which was originally supposed to be held on the day of the fire that devastated Notre Dame cathedral, Macron said he wants to see better public services outside major cities, and suggested reforming how long the French work for, but there was little detail as to how that would be carried out, with the prime minister and government tasked with putting flesh on the bones of his plans. [...]

He also expanded on his previous suggestion of "overhauling" Schengen, suggesting that countries that either refuse to take in refugees or that don't enforce border controls shouldn't be part of the border-free zone.

"On the European level, we decided to have common borders ... it's not working anymore," he said. "Responsibility comes with solidarity, this is the basis upon which Schengen should be overhauled, even if it means having fewer states within Schengen."

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openDemocracy: The Return of la Marine

The turn in fortunes is also reflected in Marine Le Pen's improved public image. Not only has she reappeared on the cover of major French news magazines; pollsters are also again taking her seriously enough as a major political contender to measure her support as well as her appeal, particularly compared to the current president of the republic. The results show that the president of the RN has managed to restore much of her credibility, even if a large majority of the electorate continues to view her negatively. In the most recent survey, a large majority of respondents credited her with being dynamic and courageous, but also arrogant and authoritarian – albeit less so than Emmanuel Macron, who has come to epitomize smugness.

Marine Le Pen owes her rebound in the polls to a significant extent to the revolt of the gilets jaunes, the grassroots protest that started in late 2018 against the rise in the tax on gas and diesel, promoted as a step towards advancing the government's green agenda. The tax hike provoked widespread rage in the rural countryside, directed particularly against Paris where it occasioned acts of violent rioting. The eruption of rage particularly benefited Marine Le Pen – and for good reason. An opinion poll on the reasons for the growing tensions in French society from early this year identified the growing "social difficulties" of parts of the population as well as "the sense that the Parisian elites (political, economic, and in the media) are disconnected from the everyday reality experienced by the French" as the main drivers of popular disaffection, aggressiveness and rage. The sense of disconnect found its most memorable expression in a slogan, attributed to the gilets jaunes: Ils évoquent la fin du monde, nous on parle de la fin du mois [They evoke the end of the world, we talk about the end of the month]. [...]

Last but not least, Marine le Pen has shown remarkable programmatic flexibility on essential issues. For the presidential election of 2017, the FN candidate made the exit from the euro one of the core issues of her presidential campaign. It turned out to be an enormous flop. Following the disaster of 2017, it was quietly dropped, even if Marine Le Pen insisted that regaining "monetary sovereignty" was still on the agenda – albeit for some time in the future. Undoubtedly, Marine Le Pen took note of the fact that a large majority of French voters are opposed to giving up the euro. Under the circumstances, pragmatism trumps ideology, even on the radical populist right. [...]

At the same time, however, the same percentage also agreed that "the unemployed could find work if they only wanted" – a position shared with the right. In other words, RN supporters are overwhelmingly in favor of some measure of social justice, as long as it tied to a notion of "deservedness" associated with productive work. Migrants and refugees clearly don't count among the deserving. For too long the both Marine Le Pen and her father have charged that the vast majority of immigrants come to France primarily to take advantage of France's generous social services; and for too long both have demanded to shut down the pompes aspirantes de l'Etat-Providence (suction pumps of the welfare state) and limit benefits to the native born (FN's policy of préférence nationale).

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The Atlantic: France’s Double Standard for Populist Uprisings

The yellow vests have effectively become a movement of middle-class and lower-middle-class people afraid of slipping further down the economic ladder. The demonstrations began as rural protests, but they now also draw support from cities. Calling the participants the “white working class” is tricky, but it’s become clear that those in the banlieues—which have large populations of several generations from across Africa—haven’t been a major force. And even if those from the banlieues identify with some of the main issues the yellow vests are raising, for the most part, they have not seen themselves reflected in the movement.[...]

But Nordine said he and others from the banlieues haven’t been joining in the Saturday demonstrations, which have often been marred by violence. “If we did that, we’d immediately be stigmatized and people would say, ‘The yellow-vest movement is going to turn into a guerilla war because you’re going to have kids from the suburbs showing up and trashing things,’ ” he said. Nordine didn’t talk about the ethnic makeup of the banlieues, but his remarks point to a recurring frustration: If you’re from “la France profonde”—rural France, largely white France—the demonstrations start a national debate (even if thousands of people have been questioned by police since the start of the yellow-vest protests); if you’re from the banlieues—and most likely of immigrant descent—and take to the streets, the demonstrations are seen as threats to public order.[...]

The banlieues have faced similar problems of unemployment and purchasing power for years. Over decades, they have also become a shorthand for people of color and problems of “integration”—code for a thicket of problems around economics, schools, social mobility, and even Islamic radicalism. These issues have simmered for years, without the kind of media attention that the yellow-vest protests have drawn. In December, a woman from Chanteloup-les-Vignes in Yvelines, a Paris suburb, who identified herself only as Yasmine F., wrote a blog post about why she wasn’t joining the yellow-vest protests. “To have trouble paying for gas means you already need to be able to pay for a car, have a job and degrees, and to get degrees and a job you need to be able to benefit from a better education and not to constantly be the victim of racism, discrimination and disdain from the upper classes,” she wrote. “For me, all those struggles come before the one about rising gas prices.”

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Politico: French poll: Yellow Jackets down, Macron up

Fifty-five percent of those polled by Odoxa, an independent research institute, now want the broad, anti-government Yellow Jackets movement to call an end to three months of often violent street protests — the first time that support for the movement has dropped below a majority, France Inter reported. That's a rise of 6 points from the previous monthly poll.

The poll also shows a rise in voters' interest in the upcoming European Parliament election in May — the first national ballot since Macron was voted president in May 2017. While interest in the European vote rose to 62 percent in the latest poll, from 54 percent in December, that is still some way below the 83 percent turnout in the presidential election.[...]

The Yellow Jacket "fatigue" is helping Macron return to pre-protest levels of popularity. After slumping 6 points in October-December, to just 27 percent, the president has recouped most of that drop, with 32 percent of respondents in the latest poll saying they think he is a "good president."

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The Atlantic: Europe’s Ubiquitous Anti-Semitism

Growing up, I used to think anti-Semitism was like the black death: tragic, nightmarish, and historic. It had wiped out millions of people. It was theoretically terrifying. But only occasional outbreaks in poor and faraway countries remained. It had ruined the life of my grandmother, but it would not be part of mine.

But now I realize that anti-Semitism is actually like the flu: uncomfortable, sickly, occasionally deadly, but constantly with us. Every few decades, it mutates into an epidemic. The rest of the time it lingers, producing headaches, sweats, and dizzy spells. Not killing us, just wearing us down.[...]

I felt it again, stronger, like a cold sweat, when I saw the footage of the Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut being mobbed by gilets jaunes—the yellow-vested protesters—who had crossed his path. They yelled, “Palestine,” “France belongs to us,” “Dirty Zionist,” and “The people will punish you.” [...]

Don’t let your Jewish identity be defined by those who hate you. Instead make it a source of strength, something they can never touch, what our ancestors wanted Jewish life to be. They saw the rituals, the togetherness, the songs of the Sabbath as a palace in time, not a cage, a way of life whose purpose was to bring the deepest calm.

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UnHerd: How the gilets jaunes could save Macron’s skin

President Emmanuel Macron, stunned at first by the vehement hatred of the gilets jaunes, is fighting back. He is rising in the opinion polls for the first time in nine months (although his popularity remains at historically low levels). His performances at a series of marathon debates with small town mayors have been impressive. A man who glided serenely to the highest position in the nation before the age of 40 might yet survive, even learn from, his first great ordeal by public loathing. [...]

What is evident, driving around France in recent days, is that the movement has wilted in its rural and outer-suburban heartlands. In mid-November, 40% of the cars in my part of Normandy displayed yellow high-vis vests on their dashboards. My own unscientific poll of the yellow splodges in car windscreens in rural Calvados now averages 14 per cent. [...]

They insist that they are peaceful but they refuse to condemn the violence at the weekend protests in Paris and other cities. Like the more militant yellow vests, they see the movement not as a protest but as an uprising that will end when they have overturned existing democratic institutions. [...]

There is an undoubted influence from the far-Right: several prominent gilets jaunes “spokespeople” have connections or sympathies. Absurd anti-semitic and alt-right conspiracy theories proliferate on gilets jaunes social media. France has been “sold” to the United Nations. Alsace and Lorraine have been ceded to Germany. The Russian economy boomed after Vladimir Putin threw out the Rothschild banks.

There is also an attempted hijacking by the ultra-Left. Some gilets jaunes leaders speak of the movement as a “class war”. The most violent of the “weekends only” protesters are bourgeois, metropolitan youths who belong to antifascist, anticapitalist militias. [...]

The latest polls show his party jumping ahead by five points to recapture the lead in the European elections in May from Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. If part of the gilets movement does run candidates of its own, they will take votes away from the far Right and the far Left. The great beneficiary would, paradoxically, be Emmanuel Macron. In other words, the French part of the EU-wide poll in May will be the most interesting European elections in European history.

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Politico: Yellow Jackets protesters announce candidates for European election

The list so far has 10 names and is led by Ingrid Levavasseur, a 31-year-old auxiliary nurse and one of the main figures of the street movement, which began in response to an increase in fuel taxes but has since morphed into a bigger — largely anti-Emmanuel Macron — cause.

The candidates have formed their own group called "Citizens' Initiative Rally" — a reference to one of the main demands of the movement: allowing for a so-called "citizens' initiative referendum," which would let citizens trigger a referendum by collecting 700,000 signatures, or 1.5 percent of registered voters. [...]

A poll last month showed 13 percent of French respondents would vote for a hypothetical Yellow Jackets list in the European election.

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Politico: Macron and Merkel’s treaty tests European nerves

Probably the most tangible outcomes of the treaty relate to cross-border cooperation, transport and trade: Both sides want to create "a Franco-German economic area" that cuts bureaucratic hurdles and establishes common regulations, laws and taxes for business on both sides of the Rhine.

However, Merkel cautioned this was a long-term project. "Take, for example, business taxes or insolvency law — much is historically structured in very different ways," the chancellor said during the discussion. "We won't change that overnight, it will take two decades."[...]

The French president, who is facing fierce opposition at home from the Yellow Jackets movement — about 100 of them gathered outside the Aachen town hall to barrack him with howling and whistling — also hit back at opponents of the treaty such as National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, who has accused Macron of handing the Alsace and Lorraine border regions back to German tutelage.

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Politico: Why Italy’s 5Stars love France’s Yellow Jackets

The Italian government is licking its wounds after losing a high-profile showdown with Brussels over its next budget. And Di Maio’s 5Star Movement is slipping in the polls, increasingly eclipsed by its coalition partner, the far-right League led by Matteo Salvini.

“My impression is that it’s not an anti-French move but an internal objective to show the base that they are still an innovative anti-establishment party,” said Giovanni Orsina, a professor of political history at LUISS University in Rome. “They need to show activists that they are still an anti-systemic force of resistance.” [...]

The anti-establishment sentiment behind the French protests is similar to the early Vaffanculo (“Go f**k yourself”) protests that led to the creation of the 5Star Movement. [...]

5Star members generally don’t support the violence that has been seen in France, Lazzari said. “We are very pacifist as a movement but in any demo you get hooligans making trouble.”

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openDemocracy: Yellow fever in France

Most of the Gilets Jaunes revolt less against the tax than against its unjust distribution. The fuel taxes were the last straw that broke the camel's back. The movement is particularly strong in areas where the withdrawal of public services is most obvious, where people are condemned to using their cars to find, beyond the moribund sub-prefectures where they live, access both to public services and jobs. They are defending what holds a society together: schools, hospitals, police stations, transport, free of charge education, and so forth. [...]

Second remark. When Gilets Jaunes come to a demonstration, particularly in Paris, it is striking to see how they do not have the traditional codes and skills of demonstrations. They do not go to the east of Paris, traditional location of all popular manifestations, but congregate in the Champs-Elysée, because it is the most famous place. The majority of the protesters have never been to any demonstration before and are coming "from the provinces" (as the Parisians say). Such people constitute the great majority of those arrested and convicted "for violence" after the demonstrations of December 1 and 8. [...]

The trade-unions initially maintained their distance, noting the anti-unionism of many Gilets. Only Solidaires (minority and radical union) supported the movement, the CGT (the main union) remaining more cautious, although some of its activists participate in the actions, and the CFDT (the second most powerful, moderate union) proposed its "mediation services" with the government (which was initially refused).

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Foreign Policy: Macron Can Survive France’s Anger

Macron’s grip over his very large majority in the National Assembly has weakened in recent days as law-makers have called for a roll-back of tax hikes and a prompt meeting with “yellow jacket” leaders, at least if leaders can be found to meet with. Nevertheless, few Western leaders can depend on the legislative loyalty that Macron still commands. I called some of the same freshman legislators with whom I met in May and found them fazed but scarcely panicked. Gaël Le Bohec, a representative from Brittany, said that he saw in the protests a “crisis of representativity” brought on by the collapse of institutions through which criticism was once channeled, including unions and opposition parties, but not a direct repudiation of Macron’s policies. [...]

Liberalization is not popular, but that’s no surprise. President Nicolas Sarkozy, a notorious hard-ass, was forced to retreat from his efforts to make it easier for French firms to hire and fire first-time workers in the face of mass protests. The French recognize that they are stuck in a low-growth, high-unemployment rut, but they resist the labor-law and tax reforms that have worked in Germany, Denmark, and other northern European welfare states. Voters never gave Macron a mandate for reform; the collapse of the traditional parties made him the sole alternative to Marine Le Pen of the National Front (now renamed the National Rally). The French voted for republicanism, not liberalism.

The demise of the usual alternatives constitutes Macron’s other structural advantage. Laurent Bigorgne, head of the very pro-Macron Institut Montaigne, pointed out to me that the self-appointed leaders of the gilets jaunes protests have been at pains to distance themselves from parties of either the left or the right. So far, the protests have hurt Macron without helping any of his rivals. The acid test will come in elections to the European Union Parliament in May. Le Pen’s party has edged ahead of Macron’s in the most recent polls of voter intentions for May. Such an outcome would be a crippling blow for Macron. Despite his calls for the patience required for the harsh medicine of reform to begin working, the economic timescale may turn out to be more protracted than the political one. [...]

Macron thought the French wanted a reincarnation of De Gaulle. He has said that the French still feel the absence of the king, and has spoken [] almost wistfully of a doctrine of “democratic heroism” in which the leader incarnates the spirit of the people. He has sought to find that space between technocrat and monarch; one can only observe that so far, the French have not been persuaded by the technocrat or seduced by the monarch. The French regard him as an elitist who carries out policies that benefit the elite at the expense of the squeezed middle class. They repudiate both his manner and his views, which stipulate that France must encourage investment by diminishing the regulatory and tax burden on companies and on the rich.

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Politico: How Macron gave Italian populists a boost

During a 13-minute televised address to the nation on Monday night, the French president promised a minimum wage increase and tax cuts, including for low-income pensioners, in an attempt to appease the Yellow Jacket protesters. The announced measures could push France's budget-deficit-to-GDP ratio to 3.5 percent, well over the EU's 3 percent ceiling, according to an anonymous government source quoted by French daily Les Echos. [...]

"But but but, Macron said he's cutting taxes and increasing public spending ... does [Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre] Moscovici agree?" Claudio Borghi, a top League MP and chair of the lower house's budget committee, tweeted after Macron's announcement. [...]

However, it would be a lot more complicated for the Commission to press on with its plans to punish Rome for its extra spending while sparing France. Macron's potential EU rules breach will also prove harmful for the ongoing negotiations on a eurozone budget, which France has spearheaded.

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The New Yorker: The Gilets Jaunes and a Surprise Crisis in France

The gilets jaunes take their name from the yellow safety vests that French drivers are required to keep in their cars. The group is a complicated phenomenon, first of all because it has no defined leader. The movement began in protest of Macron’s economic policies, particularly the increase in fuel taxes (four euro cents on the litre for unleaded gas, seven euro cents for diesel) that was introduced, in January, to help curb carbon emissions. Along with the hike in taxes, the price of gas has risen dramatically, meaning that French drivers, this fall, found themselves paying as much as 1.59 euros per litre (six dollars per gallon), an increase of seventeen per cent since this time last year for users of unleaded gas, and twenty-three per cent for diesel. For many households, particularly in rural and suburban areas that are ill-served by public transportation, the added expense has been brutal. It has also inflamed social resentment, the sense that the ruling classes and their wealthy urban supporters take the rest of the country for fools, “milking cows” for the rich to grow ever fatter off of. In a homemade Facebook video that has been viewed more than six million times, Jacline Mouraud, an accordionist from Brittany who has become a de facto spokesperson for the movement, vented her frustration with an exasperated, folksy refrain: “Mais qu’est-ce que vous faites avec le pognon des français?” (“But what are you doing with French people’s money”). In addition to the gas tax, she objected to new rules for car inspections and the transformation of the countryside into a “forest of radars.” Many of the group’s early actions consisted simply of blocking traffic on roads and at roundabouts. [...]

According to some polls, around eighty per cent of French people are sympathetic to the gilets jaunes. When the questions are worded more precisely, the number drops to around forty-five per cent, roughly the same proportion of the electorate that supported the extreme-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon (19.5%) and the extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen (21.3%) in the first round of the 2017 Presidential race. Interestingly, the gilets jaunes have been able to amass support without putting particularly impressive numbers of people on the streets. Even as physical participation in the movement has declined—from almost three hundred thousand people to a hundred a sixty-six thousand in the course of three weekends—its power has increased. (Can there ever be fewer of a thing online?) A fourth Saturday of disruption is planned for this weekend. [...]

The European Parliamentary elections are coming up in May. Macron knows that they are referendum not only on him but also on the values of globalism, centrism, and environmentalism, of which he has positioned himself as an international defender. One of the garbled but loud messages of the gilets-jaunes movement may be that it isn’t the street that Macron has to master, it’s the information highway. Macron successfully fended off hackers’ attempts to discredit his campaign on the eve of the Presidential election, but it’s hard not to wonder whether Facebook populism is finally coming for France.

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The Guardian: The French protests, like Brexit, are a raging cry for help from the disenfranchised

This wasn’t the first violent episode – two people have died since the start of the spontaneous movement, sparked by social media anger – but the main scene wasn’t the spectacular Parisian face-off, which moved from the Champs Élysées to the rest of the city. Far more telling are the protests popping up everywhere else, in what is called “la France des ronds-points” (France of the roundabouts). On 24 November, there were more than 1,600 protests, drawing 100,000 protesters across the country. At the weekend, there were 130,000 demonstrators, with more than 580 roadblocks. [...]

The fuel tax, Macron says, is a necessary measure to tackle climate change. He is right in identifying that problem, and the yellow vests do not deny this: among the demands of their newly appointed board, they ask for a “citizen assembly to debate the ecological transition”. But they have more pressing concerns, concerns that Macron’s policies ignore, they say. What started out as a revolt against fuel prices is morphing into a full-blown rejection of Macron’s fiscal agenda. [...]

Resentment against the “president of the rich”, as Macron is known, and against the urban elite who can focus on climate change because they don’t rely on their car to live, will only wind down if the yellow vests see an improvement in their economic power. The price of the ecological transition, like taxes in general, must be seen as a collective effort, not something to be paid only by the French “squeezed middle”.

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