This Wednesday – May Day – could present Emmanuel Macron with his sternest test yet. The gilets-jaunes movement, the trade unions and the Political Left – with the Far Right in tow – intend to stage the biggest anti-government protest seen in Paris since the student uprising of 1968.
The insurgents’ planned march – from Montparnasse to the Place d’Italie – may turn out to be a damp squib. Protest fatigue has certainly gripped the gilets-jaunes in recent days. But don’t bet on it. May Day is a key day in the French political calendar and the police and préfecture are taking no chances. The fearsome Compagnies Républicaines de sécurité (CRS) will be out in force, as, almost certainly, will be the casseurs, or Ultras, in their leather jackets, hoods and crash helmets.
For Macron, it could turn out to be a day of reckoning.
The President is treading water. His latest reform package, cobbled together in the course of his Grand Débat National with the French people, was watched last week by an estimated 8.5 million viewers, beating the latest episode of Game of Thrones, but with decidedly less positive reviews.
It is not that the programme as announced contained nothing of note. It was an intelligent, and realistic, presentation of what needs to be done, and must be done, if France is to maintain its place as the world’s fifth-largest economy. Very few, other than extremists on the Far Left and populist Right, doubt that the country can go on as it is. The trouble is, as I have frequently observed, that the French will accept change only if it means that everything remains the same.
Very occasionally, a great President – De Gaulle most obviously, but perhaps Mitterrand as well – comes along who can carry the electorate with them against their own convictions. The rest huff and puff in their early days, then accept their lot as merely the chairman of the board, coping with crises as they arise, hiring and firing ministers and strutting their stuff on the European and world stage while leaving the domestic agenda stuck in aspic.
Macron – almost painfully aware of his considerable intelligence and education – considers himself a great French President. That is his strength and his weakness. He knows what is needed and, almost miraculously, invented both himself and his party, La République en Marche, to get the job done. What he failed to grasp was the bit about change being primarily a matter of optics, not reality.
The only time he truly seized the moment was earlier this month, when he found the right words to describe the shock and distress caused by the disastrous fire at Notre Dame. Other than that, he is widely seen, even by many members of his own party, as arrogant and out of touch – a President for the Rich. The rise of the gilets-jaunes seems, in retrospect, inevitable, pitching an élitist who, if he could, would rule by decree against a contemporary, mainly provincial version of the Communards.
But needs must, and Macron is where he is. So what does he hope to achieve? Having previously introduced tax cuts for the wealthy, he now wants to ease the burden on ordinary French workers. Income tax reductions totalling some €5bn are to be targeted at those on the lower end of the income scale, boosting the impact of the state-funded increase in the minimum wage brought in in the aftermath of the first gilets-jaunes protests. As a further concession to the protesters, state pensions are once more to be inflation-linked for those with pensions of less than €2,000 a month. But with unemployment remaining stubbornly high, few at the bottom end are likely to be impressed.
On the other side of the ledger, the French are to be asked to work longer hours and to step up productivity. It was revealed recently that many public sector workers do not work the 35 hours laid down. The average working week for fonctionnaires, it turns out, is more like 32 hours, with public officials granted locally recognised jours fériés on top of those endorsed by the State and even, in some cases, time off in which to “prepare” for the event.
The number of civil servants and public sector workers generally is to be cut, though by how much and over what period of time remains to be seen. Macron had previously vowed to reduce the ranks of those on state or council pay-rolls by 120,000 during his term in office. But that was before the gilets-jaunes surge and before the unions had time to mobilise a response.
Other proposals are mainly rehashes of earlier promises: fewer deputies and senators, more power to the regions, a fresh look at measures to combat climate change, more proportional representation in local and national elections and the prospect of future referendums on matters of national importance – a reform he may come to regret.
There was talk, too, of “suppressing” ENA, the famed École Nationale d’Administration, which has educated nearly all French leaders, including Macron, since its foundation in 1945 but is now seen as both élitist and inflexible, yielding a production-line of sound-alike technocrats unsuited to a more meritocratic age. Will Macron follow through? Nobody knows. But there is already speculation that he will do little other than broaden ENA’s intake and the nature of its curriculum.
Meanwhile, the elections to the European Parliament are almost upon us, and in France the feeling – indeed the confident expectation – is that Macron and En Marche will be given a kicking by the voters. The smart money is on a substantial number of MEPs from the Far Left and Extreme Right being returned opposed both to the President’s domestic agenda and to his grandstanding on the need for further EU integration.
First, though, he has to get through Wednesday. Will it be a skirmish or the Battle of Winterfell? This week at least, Theresa May must feel that she has it easy by comparison.