Yellow vests direct Macron to the dustbin of history

Yellow vests were banned in Leipzig in 1775. The prohibition arose from the fact that they were the most distinctive feature of the costume affected by young men experiencing ‘Werther Fever’, the cult deriving from Goethe’s novel ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’.

This early manifestation of Romanticism marked the beginning of the delusion that young people were more sensitive and gifted than their elders: it was effectively the beginning of the cult of youth. Those 18th-century snowflakes, however, offered one significant benefit: to demonstrate how badly they were ‘suffering’ they were obliged to commit suicide, which is why the authorities banned yellow waistcoats in an attempt to discourage copycat self-slaughter.

In Britain, where young men preferred bloodstock to Klopstock and appeared immune to such Teutonic maladies as Weltschmerz, yellow waistcoats were more associated with the equine fraternity. To this day, one of the most traditional garments a gentleman may have in his wardrobe is a Tattersall check canary waistcoat with lapels (‘collared’ in tailoring terminology).

In France,  the ‘Gilet Jaune’ has acquired a recent political significance. In the nanny state inaugurated by Robespierre and perpetuated by the Énarques every motorist is obliged to have a bright yellow visibility vest in his vehicle. Lately, this imposition has come to haunt the political class and more particularly His Most Jupiterian Majesty Emmanuel Macron.

At this point it is necessary to insert the customary caution: no matter how egregious the buffoonery being exhibited by the President, we are still nowhere near peak Macron. Even in the theatre of contemporary European politics, despite the capering Verhofstadts and Junckers in Brussels, the discredited in Berlin and the unchecked in Downing Street, Wee Macron remains in a class of his own – his presidency a Feydau Farce of exceptional hilarity (provided one is not a citizen of France). But mark this: he has not realised his full entertainment potential yet.

The poor man’s Tony Blair is not an enviable role. La République En Marche (Aw, puleeze!) was a back-of-an-envelope relaunch of New Labour, the most toxic brand in 21st-century politics. As with the prototype, it had no philosophy, no rooted policy, no purpose beyond securing the elevation to power of its charlatan leader.

Macron’s capacity for self-delusion is extreme. He vowed to restore the ‘grandeur’ of France. He also pledged to champion EU integration. So, if France is to be stripped of its identity and reduced to a department of the European Union, where is the grandeur? Through France attaining hegemony over the EU is the evident response. Since Angela Merkel was bundled off to the EU’s granny flat, Macron has been behaving like Kaiser Wilhelm II let off the leash by the death of Queen Victoria.

There is one obstacle to French hegemony: the refusal of the overwhelming majority of EU states to countenance integration. Do the four Visegrad states – Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – look as if they are about to sign up to European integration? They are headed firmly in the opposite direction. Ditto Austria under prime minister Kurz. As for Salvini’s Italy, a less likely candidate for integration would be hard to imagine. Even in the Netherlands, a political culture more in harmony with Brussels, prime minister Mark Rutte has declared his opposition to EU integration in no uncertain terms.

Germany, Macron’s imaginary friend, has no intention of accepting French hegemony and, like France, its political elite is poised on the edge of an abyss and has other problems to preoccupy it. The whole European political class is on a knife-edge of survival; it is not an auspicious environment for Macron.

Macron is the canary in the coal mine for the EU elites. Of those who voted him into the presidency, a majority admitted to neither liking nor wanting him. They simply saw him as the sole alternative to Marine Le Pen. That is an instructive example of how consensus propaganda has tricked people. Because Le Pen was declared taboo by the political class and media, the French electorate, minus 11 million Le Pen voters, felt obliged to reject her. Today Macron’s popularity rating stands at 26 per cent.

Yet similar prohibitions in Austria, Germany and Italy have been rejected. How long before the French electorate realises that, unless it wants to endure a perpetuity of Sarkozys, Hollandes and Macrons, it must similarly defy the taboo? The globalist establishment has tried to make ‘populism’ a dirty word. But what actually is it?

Populism is governing in accordance with the known wishes of the majority of the people. But since those wishes are also known to exclude political correctness, mass immigration, climate hysteria and its attendant green taxes, globalism, extinction of national identity and subordination to supranational power blocs – all fetishes of the liberal establishment – such governance by popular will must be rejected. In this way, by default, the current establishment has repudiated a democratic will, now caricatured as ‘populism’.

That repudiation of democracy is now being challenged across the Western world. The sole defence the establishment can command is lies and distortion. The likes of  Macron, Merkel, Juncker et al. are presented by the media as ‘serious’ statesmen. In contrast, Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Matteo Salvini or Nigel Farage are presented as failures, not to be taken seriously.

Uh-huh? Trump has re-energized the US economy with tax cuts, brought unemployment down to record lows, confronted China’s hegemonial aspirations, delivered a conservative majority on the US Supreme Court for the first time since the 1930s. Orban has prevented mass immigration, successfully used pro-family policies to stabilise its demography and refused to bow to EU diktat. Salvini too is tempering mass immigration and fiscal dictatorship from Brussels. Farage – significantly, without ever being a member of Parliament – has successfully secured a vote to leave the EU.

And Macron? Even his tax cuts did not work. Merkel? The legacy of her reign  is migrant anarchy in Germany and Europe. Fifty years from now, how many statues of those busted flushes will be ornamenting European public squares?