Issue 182: 2018 12 13: Macron & les Gilets Jaunes

13 December 2018

Macron & Les Gilets Jaunes

Can he continue to reform France?

By Richard Pooley

photo Robin Boag

To know your own country you must leave it; to know another country you must live in it.  I wrote that observation forty years ago.  I have been reminded of it several times over the past three weeks in the UK, as I adjust to a new life: dividing my time between homes in two countries.  One is in a village in south-west France, where I have lived for nearly six years, and the other is in a small city in western England, where I lived before going to France.

What has struck me most forcibly is the ignorance about France that nearly all the British people I have come across have demonstrated.  These are not just family and friends; I have long known of the ill-informed opinions that most of them have (even among those who have read my articles on France in Shaw Sheet).  But in the course of settling back into the UK I have come across Brits from all walks of life who have been more than happy to tell me about France, even if, as in one case, the last time they were there was a decade ago for a few hours on a booze cruise.  Few have been the people who, on learning that I have been living full-time there, ask me what I think of President Macron or of the gilets jaunes protests which have racked the country every weekend since I flew out on November 17.  Instead I have had to listen to diatribes which often cross over the line into outright racism.

This is not to say I applaud the violent behaviour of the minority of protesters who have wrecked property in the centre of Paris and other major cities.  Nor am I denying that the protests have the support of most French people (86% of them according to a recent survey).  Nor am I pretending that Macron’s arrogance and failure to explain his reforms properly have not been a major contributor to this crisis.  It is indeed a crisis.  But although it is a big one for Macron’s government, it is not the first attack on his reforms that he has had to deal with.  He has overcome several previous ones – e.g. the demonstrations against his changes to the Labour Law and the three-month strike by railway workers, unprepared to see their outrageously expensive fringe benefits refused to their successors.  Although he has been forced to cancel his increases in fuel tax – the initial demands of the protesters – and find ways to make life a little less hard for the genuine poor, Macron has refused to amend his reforms or cancel any major tax changes.  Nor has he agreed to obey the most common request of the protesters: to resign.

So, what is really going on in France?  Whence this anger by so many against their government and the man who a quarter of French people seemed to regard as a saviour of their country only 18 months ago? And what now?  Will Macron continue to retreat as every one of his predecessors did in the face of anger on the French “Street”?  Or will he learn from this battle, which he undoubtedly lost, and go on to win the war?  Time to tell you a few facts before I indulge in the dangerous game of forecasting much beloved by journalists at this time of year.

The protests have their source in an online petition launched in May by a black woman in her early thirties, Priscillia Ludosky.  She lives east of Paris, and is founder and head of a company selling online “biocosmetics” and aromatherapy advice.  She was angry at how much she and her employees were having to pay for fuel when commuting to work.  Her petition garnered 10,000 signatures by the end of May and 950,000 by 28 November.  I smiled when I read about Mme Ludosky.  If you had to describe a typical Macron supporter, she would be it.  Moreover, as someone selling environmentally-friendly products, surely she and her staff would accept the government’s explanation for their increases in tax on diesel: to nudge French people into buying electric or hybrid cars, and to pay for the development of renewable resources?  Every survey shows that most French accept that the climate is changing and that Man is responsible.  My French friends are proud of the lead role taken by their government in trying to get the world to tackle the problem.  It is, after all, the Paris Climate Agreement.  But the French expect everyone in France to make the necessary financial sacrifices so that their country can meet the targets set by that agreement.  And that is where Macron went wrong.  The people hit by his fuel tax increases were not the rich or city-dwellers, even the poor ones.  They were those who have long commutes by car to work; those living in villages and small towns across France.  And a little extra fact of French life: many of those commuters drive to and from home for lunch every working day.  Yes, they do.  Which is why they often start work at 08.00 and finish at 19.00.

But surely, you may ask, this relatively trifling example of taxation imposed inequitably does not justify smashing shop windows, torching cars and seriously injuring hundreds of people (and causing the death of three)?  The answer lies in that innocuous word “relatively”.  British media and some French commentators report that, aside from the opportunist extremists of Left and Right who have appropriated their vests, the true gilets jaunes are the rural poor and those who struggle to make ends meet.  Initially, I thought the same (see my article on the first day of the protests – It’s Going To Be A Nightmare).

Now I have had second thoughts.  The gilets jaunes feel relatively poor, compared in particular to those well-heeled Parisians who, every summer, come to flaunt their wealth and well-being outside their second homes in country areas such as mine.  My friend Philippe is a good example of a true gilet jaune.  He sent me photographs of a large gathering of protesters in Brive last Saturday.  Brive is his home town and 30-minutes’ drive from my village.  His text showed how proud he was that the Brivistes had come out in force but in peace.  Philippe has fallen on hard times.  He had to close down his panel-beating business last year and now works as a technician at a Renault dealership.  His wife Marie, a child carer, ensures they have enough money at the end of each month.  But they are not poor by any definition I know of.  Philippe continues to buy two season tickets so he and someone in his family can watch Brive play rugby.  They live in a large and well-furnished house to which they recently added a conservatory.  He and Marie’s only worry about the one-week holiday they are taking in Scotland in May is whether they will need passports to get in; last time he came to the UK he only needed his French identity card.  I thought of Philippe when I heard another gilet jaune, a pensioner, complain to a BBC reporter that he could no longer take his annual two-week holiday.  Food banks and charity shops are not much in evidence in my part of France.  Yet the Lot is one of the most rural and poorest departments in the country.

No, the gilets jaunes are not poor.  Here are some more facts, supplied by the Le Monde newspaper.

The average cost of childcare in France is 514€ per month but the State pays 319€ (62%) of that.  The average price of a rail ticket is 107€ but the State pays 59€ (55%) of that.  My 4 ½ -hour train journey from Brive to Paris seldom costs more than 50€.  The average annual cost of hospital in-patient care is 3,228€ but the State pays 2941€ (91%) of that.  The average cost of one year’s study at university is 11,670€ but the State pays no less than 94% of that and usually 100%.  How is the State able to afford this largesse?  By imposing high taxes, of course.  But not on the poor.  As long as your total income is less than around 40,000€, you pay far less income tax than a Brit on the same income, especially if your spouse does not earn.  The average annual salary in France is 36,000€.  Yes, social security payments are very high (25% of earnings in my case) but even so I guess a typical gilet jaune has a better net financial relationship with the State than their British counterpart.  But they don’t feel it.  And when the embodiment of the elite in far-away Paris – the globe-trotting, haughty President Macron – lectures them from behind his desk at the Elysée Palace about the need to encourage entrepreneurship and job-creation by cutting taxes for those who create and invest in companies, they feel he really is the “president of the rich”.  He is not speaking their language.  He is not offering them any hope that their lives and those of their children will get better, even though objectively their lives are pretty good already.

What can Macron do to restore some trust in him and what he is trying to do?  The advice is coming in from all sides.  Most demand that he changes course.  A few suggest that he sticks with his plans but comes out from behind that desk and gets out into his country, out of Paris, and meets the gilets jaunes face to face.  And uses the most persuasive technique of all – listening.  I agree.  He has to persuade them that what he is doing will, in the end, give them a better future, though perhaps not a richer one.

He can do it.  He did it during the election campaign.  Striking workers at a plant which was threatened with closure held angry demonstrations accusing Macron of wanting to see their jobs being exported abroad.  To their (and the media’s) astonishment he strode in among them and listened to what they had to say.  His poll ratings soared.

Will he do it?  I think so.  He won’t find it easy.  Even his wife has publicly accused him of arrogance and of being dismissive of those he considers intellectually inferior, which, in his case, is probably most people.  But he looked genuinely abashed on Monday evening when he spoke to the French people. Twenty-three million tuned in to listen to him, more than watched France win the football World Cup.  The French people are still prepared to listen to their rulers.  Surely a good sign.  It gives me hope that Macron will return the favour.

 

 

 

 

 

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