Macron does penance on nationwide listening tour
Suddenly, it’s all about listening. Trickle-down democracy has had its day – at least for the moment.
France’s President Macron has been through a baptism of fire that no one could have predicted. The gilets-jaunes protesters, numbering at their peak in the hundreds of thousands, were fed up listening to the blandishments of their youthful head of state, who had spent much of his time since taking office in 2017 lecturing them on why they were lazy and useless and, to be frank, surplus to the nation’s requirements.
Direct action, led by no one in particular and everyone in general, became the order of the day, leading to a sequences of weekend assaults on the police, luxury goods stores, posh cars and selected symbols of the power of the state up to and including the semi-sacred Arc de Triomphe.
For weeks, Macron offered no response, other than to give in to the mob’s demands. He cancelled a rise in the price of diesel, postponed changes to workers’ pensions and announced a whopping 100 euros a month increase in the national minimum wage, to be paid for largely out of state borrowing. The rioters took stock. Some of them went home, believing that this was as good as it was ever going to get. But a substantial minority, in support of a hard core of activists, decided to press ahead and go for broke, giving rise to fears that the Elysée Palace itself would be the ultimate, Bastille-like target of the people’s wrath.
It was at this point, with the CRS battling protesters on the streets of Paris and other cities every Saturday afternoon, at a cost of millions to the Treasury but significantly more in terms of his reputation, that Macron went into listening mode. “Je vous écoute, mes enfants,” was the gist of his New Year’s address to the nation, in which he announced a Grand National Debate involving himself (naturellement), ministers, deputies, the trade unions, academics, local representatives, l’Oncle Tom Cobley et tous.
And, true to his word, this week, in the obscurity of Grand Bourgtheroulde, a small town in Normandy, he spent seven hours, microphone in hand, talking to more than 600 local mayors many of whose yellow-vested fellow-citizens had descended with intent on the capital every Saturday for the previous two months.
There was no hair shirt, just a crisp white shirt and tie. But the President was conciliatory – as well he might be. He promised that in the remaining three-and-a-half years of his term in office he would always bear in mind the impact on ordinary people of the reforms he planned to introduce, so that, as he bid to make the country richer and stronger, they would not end up poorer and weaker. He was even ready to look again at ways in which the problems of mass immigration – a key, if often unspoken, concern of the protesters – could be addressed in a national as well as a pan-European context.
The one thing he was not prepared to do was to reintroduce the wealth tax that he felt had held France back by disincentivising economic development. This drew a sharp intake of breath from his audience, each sporting his or her red-white and blue sash of office. But he was, he said, ready to “consider” cancelling the 80 kph speed limit on everyday trunk roads that, when imposed last summer in place of the time-honoured 90kph limit, had helped inspire, or provoke, the gilets-jaunes.
How much listening did the President do, and how much talking? In fairness, the mayors were given their voice throughout their seven-hour ordeal. They were able to express their concerns and make their demands. But in the end, it was what Macron said that was reported in the papers and on television.
As for the yellow-vested interest, it was left to the President’s near-namesake Emmanuelle Wargon, a trusted high-functionary newly charged with organising the National Debate, to talk directly to a gaggle of protesters on the steps of the town hall in which the President was busy listening. Not everyone in the waiting crowd was happy. “Collabos!” they cried. But others seemed content. “You can’t please everybody,” was the verdict of one retired electricity worker, now a local councillor.
Where the debate goes from here is difficult to say. Clearly, Macron cannot be expected to clear his diary every Wednesday to listen to the people banging on about how unfair everything is. He has to integrate Europe, revitalise the military, defeat terrorism, reform the unions, shrink the size of the public sector, modernise industry and complete the transfer of the City of London to La Défense.
But at least he’s showing willing. Too little too late is the obvious criticism, but what else can he do? Last year he was Jupiter, and sometimes Mars. There were even those who saw him as Saturn, devouring his children. But as Mercury, the Winged Messenger, maybe he can begin to make up a little of his lost ground.