The ‘Queen of France’ is making life difficult for Macron

The new year in France has got off to its traditionally violent start, with hundreds of cars set ablaze across the country and an attempted lynching of two police officers in the suburbs of Paris. Yet in the increasingly surreal world of social media, what is causing uproar is Brigitte Macron’s breach of protocol to stand beside her husband on state visits. The custom has been for president’s wives to stand behind their husbands, but Madame Macron has said that from now she’ll be side by side with her man. ‘A woman does not have to be behind’, she is quoted as saying by RTL radio. Her comments were subsequently elaborated on by Tristan Bromet, her chief of staff, who explained that the break with tradition was the result ‘of the couple she forms with Emmanuel Macron: a modern union in which the woman is placed at the same level as the man’.

The president’s enemies leapt on the news, seizing it as another opportunity to portray the couple as regal and arrogant.