Macron’s next challenge is taking on the public sector

“Very well … alone.” Emmanuel Macron has entered into yet another new phase of his trouble-hit presidency. Two years ago, he could depend not only on a National Assembly utterly dominated by his En Marche movement, but the fourth floor of the Elysée Palace was filled with young men and women – we would call them Spads – brimful of enthusiasm for the ongoing grand projet that was their young master’s destiny.

Since then, they have all gone. The fourth floor, reportedly, is an empty space.

All politicians rely on their advisers, who are paid to do much of their bosses’ thinking for them. It is not as if Macron has given up on governing France. Far from it. Just this week he let it be known that he is ready to put flesh on the bones of his campaign promise to reduce the public sector workforce by as much as 120,000. This is clearly controversial and bound to be opposed by the CGT, France’s equivalent of the TUC. To rub it in, civil servants, both national and regional, have been told that they must work the full 35 hours to which they are committed by law, and not the 30 or so that, according to the French press, is increasingly the norm.

It would have been hard enough to get such measures through at the best of times. But these are not the best of times.

So what changed? First, last summer, came the Benalla Affair, the revelation that Macron’s head of security and deputy chief of staff, Alexandre Benalla, had beaten up protesters in Paris while masquerading illegally as a member of the CRS riot police. It turned out that Benalla was too close to the President for comfort. Photos emerged of the pair of them out cycling. It was as if the young aide was a closer confidant than the Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe. When it transpired that Benalla travelled on a coveted diplomatic passport, all bets were off and the hunt was on.

The resulting Senate inquiry was for the French like the Mueller inquiry was for Americans. Its findings, published four weeks ago, were damning: the Elysée’s inner circle were depicted as self-referential and sinister, unimpressed by mere democracy. The team around the President – none of them elected – came across as dysfunctional. To cap it all, it was recommended that Benalla be prosecuted not only for his obvious misdemeanours but because of alleged links to Russian agents.

But worse was to follow. Much worse. The eruption of the Gilets-Jaunes – the Yellow Vests – last November exposed as empty talk Macron’s claim to be in touch with the people, moving in harmony with the national will. The 40-year-old head of state was already regarded as snooty and arrogant, having much more in common with the banking Establishment than with ordinary citizens. That said, when protesters wearing the distinctive luminous vests required by French motorists demanded an immediate reduction in the price of diesel, scheduled to increase in the New Year, plus a rise in the basic minimum wage, none could have predicted that a door was being opened into a world of pain for the President.

Macron insisted at first that he would not give in to such insolence. Then the protests started. Parts of the country were paralysed. The first angry marchers descended on the Champs-Élysee. And Macron – temperamentally unprepared for what followed – beat a hasty retreat. Not only did he retract the fuel hike, he announced that the base wage would increase by one hundred euros a month, paid for by the central government.

From then on, the path led inexorably downwards. The protests expanded, most obviously in Paris, where shops were wrecked and looted and cars set alight. A champion boxer was arrested for beating up a police officer. Several protesters lost fingers while trying to hurl flash bombs back at the police. Another was blinded in one eye.

Most astonishingly, the protests didn’t stop. Even as Macron embarked on a one-man Great Debate, touring the country to talk at length to the little people, or in one case to a gathering of philosophers and other public intellectuals, the hard nuts among the Gilets-Jaunes stepped up their game. The violence grew, as did the damage caused and the resentment felt by retailers in the world’s most famous shopping district.

But nothing is forever, and, with the appointment of a new prefect of police in the capital and the issuance of an edict that in future force would be met with greater force, some semblance of order began to return. Macron’s approval ratings, which were down in single digits, even began to pick up as the nation grew tired of mayhem and looked to the President to take charge of events.

It was in this phase, just as the worst at last appeared to be over, that the rats began to desert the sinking ship. Macron’s advisers, once so cool and self-assured, began to peel away, fearful of being associated with an administration in meltdown.

And now, for the moment at least, there are none – just an echoing fourth floor, devoid of input. Where a year ago the air was filled with the point and counterpoint of smartphones, today there is little beyond, one assumes, the steady hum of air-conditioners.

No doubt, replacements will be found. There is never a shortage of people willing to find out what it’s like to be at the centre of events, And in addition to the Spads, Macron has the civil service behind him, many of whom at the highest level are probably putting in as many as 60 or 80 hours a week.

Where the next cracks could show is in the Assembly. En Marche deputies – many of them in elected office for the first time –  find themselves under fire from their constituents for not restraining the Executive, and for not doing the listening that was their principal selling point in the lead-up to the 2017 general election. Murmurs of discontent have been growing. Not able to fall back on dogma – because En Marche doesn’t have any dogma beyond wishing the best for everyone –  young politicians in particular are having to ask themselves questions that previously they relied on the President to answer.

Thus far the Cabinet has held together, though a reshuffle is constantly said to be imminent. A couple of ministers have resigned, but the rest remain in place, watched over by the Prime Minister, who though a Macron loyalist must be asking himself how long it will be before he is called into the palace to be thanked for his service before catching a taxi home.

For now, the Gilet-Jaune threat seems to be in remission. But it could start up again at any moment, fuelled this time not by diesel but by civil servants and council officials determined to hold on to their jobs and their less-than-onerous working hours.

Macron is right about the public sector. It is bloated and lazy, unlike the manufacturing sector, which is under-strain, but productive. His challenge, ducked by all of his predecessors, lies in persuading his volatile fellow countrymen and women that yet another crisis, possibly involving blood on the streets, will lead to the sunlit uplands of a better and more rational France. To succeed, he will need a lot more luck than has come his way in the last 12 incident-packed months.