Macron is finally facing his reckoning with history

Here is a tale of two cities. In one, the Government, with little regard for constitutional niceties, pushed through a measure based on principles it had been elected to oppose – the Windsor Framework. In the other, the government used legal constitutional provisions to pass a pensions reform for which it could argue it had a public mandate. In the first city, the response was weary acceptance or even relief. In the second, the response was of outrage expressed though violent protests.

Admittedly, in London, it was a mere matter of national sovereignty, whereas in Paris it affected the money in people’s pockets. Yet a similar increase in the pension age was adopted in Britain in 2011 and again in 2014 with little opposition, and France has one of the earliest retirement ages in Europe and one of the biggest national debts. So why do so many moderate people in France sympathise with extreme protests against a reasonable reform? And why do they take to the streets with few inhibitions against violence?

Part of it this time is Macron’s personality and his anomalous political position. A veteran French journalist once said to me that Macron had always been “the cleverest chap in the room”, and he does not hide it. He can be tactless and arrogant. Moreover, he was elected somewhat grudgingly because he was not Marine Le Pen. Macron has never enjoyed the affections of most French people, more and more of whom have decided they dislike him.

He presides over a constitutional system that a distinguished French writer once described as “so dangerous that it would be criminal to put it in the hands even of a saint”. This is the Fifth Republic, created for General de Gaulle in the 1950s as what the chief draughtsman of its constitution described as a “Republican monarchy”.

Here, we need a little history. As we all know, on 14 July 1789 a crowd of Parisians started a revolution. Most revolutions fail, and generally create a situation worse than the one they set out to remedy, as those who have seized power fall out, prove inept, and often end up killing each other. We have seen the same with our Brexit revolution, metaphorically anyway: David Cameron was our Louis XVI, and Boris our Danton.

The French revolution engendered mass violence, several coups d’état, three restorations, 14 constitutions, two empires, one “State”, and five republics. It left the country split into factions (there are three distinct Right-wing traditions, and arguably three Left-wing traditions too). So no regime enjoyed real legitimacy. Every crisis seemed to threaten a constitutional collapse, even another revolution.

Then de Gaulle created the Fifth Republic, arguably the first since 1789 to enjoy general acceptance. So why the present upheavals, and the many others that have preceded them? Because for de Gaulle, France’s problem was weak government. So he went to the other extreme and created the republican monarchy. The procedure Macron used (the now notorious Clause 49, section 3) allows the government to call a motion of confidence on a piece of legislation. If the parties in parliament fail to overthrow the government, the legislation is adopted. Thus the elected president confronts and defeats the elected parliament: he does not have to persuade or compromise. So opposition takes to the streets.

De Gaulle thought of the French as a flock of sheep, but even sheep can turn nasty, as he found in May 1968. The weakness of the Fifth Republic is its failure to persuade, to carry people with it. So parliament is not an effective transmitter of public sentiment, and governments have regularly been taken by surprise by hostile outbursts. They have usually had to back down.

But Macron is the most monarchical of presidents since de Gaulle. He may decide to persist and appeal to the judgment of history. If so, the outcome is anyone’s guess.