France is the one place where democracy works broadly as we would expect it to. Political parties that fail their voters collapse and disappear. Politicians who are hated seem upset at the fact, and do not hide their hurt behind forced smiles. The ‘angry mob’, a fixture of our political imagination, has on more than one occasion in French history actually succeeded in deposing the Government. France has a flourishing extreme Left, but also a flourishing extreme Right. Politicians openly steal from the treasury instead of laundering their theft in opaque ways. The military, which has all the weapons, does actually threaten violence from time to time. One British cliché about France is its love of street protest. But this speaks more to Britain’s strangeness than to France’s. In France, all factions in public life are allowed to take to the streets – as we would well expect in a liberal democracy. In Britain, by contrast, crowds are selectively policed.
Other democracies seem haunted and lunar by comparison. The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan has held power for 63 of the past 67 years. German politics is dominated by immovable Grand Coalitions that last for decades. Everyone of importance in American politics is over the age of 75. British prime ministers are bundled from office by quangos and civil servants.
If democratic gravity seems to apply only in France, then we can assume that politics there still turns on votes, coalitions and appeals – not, as it does here, on the mysteries of the Ministerial Code. Judging by recent events, this is a brute lesson that Emmanuel Macron has yet to learn.
Another British cliché about France is that its current President wants to keep a ‘Jupiterian’ distance from the din of party. Otto von Bismarck was the only democratic politician who has ever carried this off. He famously had no party of his own, and held the Reichstag in contempt. Macron’s great failing isn’t this conceit, but that he hasn’t been remotely conceited enough. Bismarck was convinced that he was Germany’s indispensable man, and would not stoop to ally himself with anyone else for very long. He first played the liberal, then the anti-Catholic, then the reactionary. He built up allies only to destroy them; he would careen first to the Left and then to the Right, a wild political see-saw that he always managed to straddle.
Macron does not have this room for manoeuvre, despite his boasts of independence. He is above all the representative of those who elected him, and could not abandon them even if he wanted to. The social base of Macron’s presidency is the country’s class of civil servants – spendthrift, obstinate, and comprising around a fifth of the population. This class is the defender France’s current economic model, in which mass migration is used to pay for a system of pensions, venal offices and direct cash payments. This senile pyramid scheme, which is not unique to France, does not even work as advertised – a 2018 study showed that the contribution of migrants to the French treasury was either negligible or slightly negative.
The ruin of the old parties, the centre-Left Socialists and the centre-Right Republicans, left this class by 2017 with no organised political force except for the neophyte Macron – something that Macron’s predecessor, Francois Hollande, was quick to grasp. It fell to Macron not so much to bring about his own programme of reform, but to simply fulfil the old constitutional role of blocking the National Front every five years.
Beyond performing this simple task, the French governing classes are not interested in Macronism. His liberal ideas are at best secondary, at worst an annoyance – hence the exaggerated sighs when it comes time for them to collude with him to thwart the nationalists; a manoeuvre that relies on a quirk of the voting system especially designed for this purpose. Macron’s project is contradictory; he speaks of a rotten economic system, but his support is made up of those who prosper under it. With his pension reform Macron invites France’s bureaucratic class to abolish its own privileges and then thank him for it. Calonne, another would-be French reformer, once invited the country’s nobility to do much the same – with similar results.
Any reform of France, then, means war to the knife against its civil service. It by definition sets one on a populist course, if not a demagogic one. France’s current pension entitlements are unaffordable, and there is something grotesque about the surprising number of young people who have been called out onto the streets to defend a system that will enslave them with debt. Macron now needs a crowd of his own, and this means a popular programme. An end to the policy of mass migration would not only earn support from France’s Right, but is the logical conclusion of pension reform. Macron’s task is not one of reform, but destruction – the destruction of a class that is ruining France. When Louis Napoleon crowned himself as Napoleon III in 1852, one of his first acts was to steal all the property of France’s defunct monarchy. The Countess Lehon quipped that this was “the first vol of the eagle”, vol meaning both ‘flight’ and ‘steal’. So too for Macron, and he would be stealing from all the right people.
J. Sorel is a pseudonym.
Stop Press: Dan Hannan says Macron is ready to betray Taiwan in a vainglorious effort to establish the EU as a ‘third pole’ in the bi-polar world order.
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So What you’re saying is ???… ( I’ve just woke up)
What the f is so downtickable about waking up?
️
God knows. There are some proper lame ducks patrolling these threads.
I agree with the author:
France’s current pension entitlements are unaffordable, and there is something grotesque about the surprising number of young people who have been called out onto the streets to defend a system that will enslave them with debt
But the age is rising from 60-62? And the ones rioting are not the uncivil service-political class, but normal people from all over the spectrum. I am not sure shaving off 2 years does much to stave off bankruptcy.
Are they not rioting over many issues? Ennui, the lack of freedom, the open borders, the destruction of France, the 3 Churches attacked each day, the emasculation of life?
And me wonders. Rona – billions/trillions spent, LDs, diapers, jibby jabby stabby’s, unfettered Gestapo Fascism – little public pushback. A few protests in Paris and elsewhere but nothing like what is now on-going.
Are the riots really about a 2 year increase in the retirement age, when in reality, most of us plebs will keep working as long as we can?
All “welfare state” Ponzi schemes are ultimately unaffordable …. the garlic-chompers are no different.
I thought the scale of the riots/protests was about the process as much as the policy change?
The process is trivial, they’re workshy and have become dependent on the tit of the state.
I really think your missing the point mate!
At least the French have got bottle! and the Dutch, What do we do? “Oh its ok, doesn’t really bother me, I’ve got my jab and my ev and my heat pump, I’ll do as I’m told by my all powerful government ”
What the hell happened to Britain??
This comment is valid, but so is the comment it critiques. Have the French become used to cradle-to-grave state support? Good grief of course they have! At the same time, do the French have more guts in the face of tyranny than we do? Good grief of course they do!
Laptop maestro’s downticks are disproportionate. Both statements are correct.
Sarkozi introduced reforms and put the retirement age up amid much protest. Hollande then won the election and reversed the reforms.
Yes they are rioting over many issues, the biggest one being f’ed off with the same old same old powers that be! This should be happening all over the western world! We need to grow some balls! Riot, let them know! and don’t vote!
They are a continuation of the Gilets Jaunes protests which were at root about the abandoning of the rural economy and population by the metro-elites and their cronies in the WEF. The trigger was the tax increase on diesel. Rural France runs on diesel, where distances are great and there are few buses and infrequent trains, so everybody uses a car or van.
There is no gas grid in France like the UK, piped gas only available in cities and some big towns, so people use wood, LPG or oil mostly for heating and cooking, so fossil fuel price increases have a big effect on the rural economy. Power cables to many properties are low rated usually no more than 6kVA, so electricity is typically used for low power appliances not heating. Higher rated supply is possible but costs more.
France has a very large rural population and agricultural sector, mostly living off State welfare and CAP subsidies. There is little new business activity in the rural economy, few jobs, the young don’t want to work at farming often abandoning farms they have inherited, and instead move to the cities or outside France to Belgium, UK, Canada, US.
The big problem for the young is the rigid labour laws. Once hired it is virtually impossible to fire anyone, then the cost is enormous. Employer social security charges are very high. Employers therefore are reluctant to take a chance with young people with no track record, so they get hired, if at all, on temporary contracts of 11 months to avoid the ‘No firing’ rules. Consequently the unemployment rate for the under 25s is 26%… and has been for years.
Also crazy rules & regs. For example. In order to work in a bar, you need to have attended a qualifying course and passed an exam and get a certificate.
This may explain why so many young people are rioting.
A few days ago there was a piece on (IIRC) GBNews by Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, who seems to be more of a ‘proper’ journalist, bringing interesting perspective to reporting on France. Commenting on the ongoing riots and the apparent police brutality against protesters, she said that most French demonstrations are union-organised and start peacefully, until the equivalent of our Antifa arrive (I forget the name). Only then do the police intervene with force. It would be useful to hear independent verification of this.
“Only then do the police intervene with force”
Your living in dream world mate!
Not the police. The French have a riot squad – Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurtité… CRS.
They are a reserve of the Police Nationale to deal with security issues as directed by Government, but mostly used for crowd control and riot control to break up demonstrations that Govt doesn’t like with extreme violence.
Macron’s a cock who’s days are numbered !
Vive la France!
Trudeau’s a cock who’s days are numbered!
Vive au Canada!
Sunak, well, unfortunately we don’t have a marine le Pen!
Keir Starmer.., you get what you get in the UK and like it!…
Vive le Canada. Just sayin.
Unless Canada has become transgenderd, then it’s La Canada?
“Macron’s task is not one of reform, but destruction – the destruction of a class that is ruining France.”
Well, he / she got this bit right but this applies to all Western “democracies.”
The great reset has at its heart the complete demolition of the middle class, precisely the groups enacting the wishes of whichever government is in control although these people are too intelligent – that word again – to realise it.
From what bits I have seen from alternative media the French people are well aware that their fight is more than just pensions, it is about their democracy. Macron is pursuing a policy for which he has no mandate. The people are sick of it and this I believe forms the backbone to their fight.
The reset is happening in France as much as elsewhere and the French people know it.
The camouflage of pensions suits both sides for now. Would that our dozy lot might wake up.
I agree with your main points, but what have those protests ever really achieved other than a few delays of the policies people protested against?
In the largest ones, the Algeria/DeGaulle ‘Je vous ai compris!’ case, the protesters have actually been taken for a ride and eventually been rewarded with the very opposite of what they demanded and thought they’d been assured by him to get- he just took the p*ss out of them with that statement!
And Macron is the best example that the, admittedly there and in Italy functioning, destruction and changeover of political parties never really changed the politics, politicians and real people in charge.
After all, that really didn’t even happen in Germany after WW2 bar for the most egregious and exposed former leaders.
France was and is saved and able to afford its wider civil service caste, waste and peculiarities like 2 hour lunch breaks by the EU and its German/British money, some areas it protects, keeps national and does well like ag/food, health, nuclear, military, tourism, and, above all, by the extremely successful and profitable luxury goods sector: currently, 4 of the top 10 European companies by market cap are such French companies!
The latter also allows it to get away for now with its low innovation rate over the last 4 decades as per patents, in contrast to the UK.
That civil service is, in contrast to the UK, also well educated for its job and gets the work it needs to do done, even by working only in September…
Same goes for those 2 hour lunch break people in the private sector, who also sometimes (have to) work in Spring, not just September.
Macron is an ex Rottenchild banker.. he was put in power to destroy France and that’s exactly what he’s doing, very successfully. His mentor is Jacques Attali, one of the most evil ***** who ever walked the earth. Someone who the fact-checkers are furiously cleansing on the internet from all his previous words and deeds.
As for the riots, I’m very unsure about their true substance. Many of the top union leaders are establishment to the core behind the scenes. When you’re scoring six figure salaries, its not hard to see why. Most of the destruction while rioting is caused by a group called the Black Block, who are suspected of being in the pay of the security services.
Pensions, of course they’re unaffordable. All Western countries are insolvent. They are just being ushered towards collapse by those behind the curtain, the usual suspects. Those who you’re not allowed to criticise, among them the International Banking Cartel. My guess is the French elite are looking for an excuse to bring in Marshall Law. I might be wrong of course, but with all the events/distractions taking place at the moment, who knows.
As un anglais en La France I watch and listen to my French friends. Many of whom are Gilet Jaunes.. people who were/are a real grass roots movement, but brutally suppressed by Macron and his thugs..
“France is the one place where democracy works broadly as we would expect it to.”
Indeed.
As Alexander Fraser Tytler put it: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”
France is at end-point, dictatorship, Britain following close on its heels.
Solution: close down the welfare state and move State-run/Local Authority-run public services into the competitive private sector; limit tax raising to no more than 5% of GDP.
The parallels to the decline and demise of the Roman empire are indeed striking.
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/der_langsame_tod_des_westroemischen_reiches
That AF Tytler quote is spot on. It continues:
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
Clearly, this sequence can’t be denied, and clearly, for the last (I would say) 6 years, we’ve been in its final stage. Great quote, JXB.
I’m no fan of Macron, he seems to hate us Brits, but France can’t continue to afford even a universal retirement age of 62. I thought The riots in France are against changing retirement age to 64 and even then are not justified. There are jobs where the physical requirements mean some people over 60 can’t continue to do, and that means many people in that position need to claim to be ill. There needs to be a system in place where people in that situation can still contribute something to society, but that will be difficult, although necessary to organise.
I’m interested to see someone down ticking my post, presuming they support younger retirement age in France, even when in the UK it’s 68. I am years older than that and still working full-time and contributing taxes to pay towards the public services I use and those of others.
Those who feel entitled to their entitlements by the state will rebel if they are reduced.