Le Pen is just another establishment politician

One Saturday in March, I attended an anti-lockdown rally in central Paris. I was there partly out of journalistic curiosity but also out of solidarity with those Frenchmen and women who believed it was high time life returned to normal. What struck me was the similarity between the protestors and those I had walked with in 2018 in the early weeks of the yellow vest movement in Paris — overwhelmingly middle-aged blue-collar workers.

The yellow vests famously had no leader because it was a protest movement that arose not out of any strong political conviction but from what the French call ras-le-bol: despair at what was perceived as an arrogant and out-of-touch political class who seemed intent on punishing the poorest in society. Likewise, those French who from the start of the Covid crisis have questioned the wisdom of putting the economy into hibernation and depriving the young of an education have had no mainstream political party willing to champion their cause.