The chaos is closer to home than Macron thinks

Out and about in Paris on Saturday I passed scores of protestors on their way to the Champs-Élysées to vent their fury against Emmanuel Macron. Wearing their gilet jaunes (yellow vests), they were angry, determined and overwhelmingly white and middle-aged. The nationwide protest that pulled in nearly 300,000 demonstrators has been billed as a pushback against rising fuel tax but it goes much deeper than that; it’s the revolt of the people against a president they believe holds them in contempt. As one demonstrator told Le Figaro: ‘Macron is the president of the rich and not the poor. He should think also about the poor.’

Macron rarely thinks about the poor, except to insult them. In July 2017 he referred to them in a speech as ‘nothing’, the first of several barbs at those less fortunate than himself. That speech was at the opening of a start-up centre in Paris, where his audience was tecchies, hipsters and entrepreneurs – Macron’s kind of people.