Meet the aristocrat plotting Macron’s downfall

Can a modern revolution emanate from the political centre or, more unconventionally, from the heart and mind of an aristocrat who places republican values above factional allegiance? This was the question that propelled me more than a hundred miles east of Paris – while another day of mass demonstrations unfolded in the capital and across France – to the post-industrial town of Vitry-le-François to meet Charles de Courson, the French parliamentarian descended from Norman nobility who nearly succeeded in bringing down the government of President Emmanuel Macron with a no-confidence vote on 20 March.

The interparty revolt led by De Courson’s small group of nonaligned deputies in the National Assembly had been triggered by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne’s invoking of Article 49.3, a frankly dictatorial clause in the constitution that permitted the government to impose an increase in the French retirement age from 62 to 64, rather than put it to a vote she almost certainly would have lost.

​On 6 April, the grey and rainy day I interviewed De Courson in his fief, the 5th Assembly district in the department of the Marne, the decision by the Constitutional Council to validate the pension reform was still two weeks away, and Monsieur le Député, dressed in a dark suit, black jersey and tie, seemed reasonably happy with the outcome of his work so far.