| Tempted though I am to point and laugh at Macron’s humiliation by the gilet jaunes , I won’t. Okay, well, I confess, I did. A bit. Okay, okay, a lot. That said, I’m actually broadly in sympathy with him.
One of the things I noticed while living in France was how nineteen seventies it was – and I don’t mean that in a good way. The restrictive labour laws, protectionism and high levels of taxation really needed a Thatcherite touch – okay, sledgehammer, then. When Macron came to power, he did so on that platform. He didn’t exactly hide what he had in mind here. So now that he has set about his reforms, all those folk who voted for him to keep Le Pen out are now getting what they voted for good and hard. And to be fair, that pain is a necessity. Macron backing off isn’t going to solve anything other than his short-term future and will merely delay the pain that France will have to endure at some point. The lesson here is that actually, if the French really wanted more of the same – that is restrictive labour laws and protectionist policies – then they should have voted for Le Pen and her broadly socialist platform. Heh!
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Macron only won the election because Fillon was caught with his “hand in the till” (Illegally claiming to employ his wife and his children) when it was too late to replace him with another La Republicans member.
Perfectly true. However, he made no secret about the platform he was standing on, so it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
It has been fairly amusing to watch Macron’s pompous diktat to increase taxation on fuel and energy on les plebs converted in just a few short weeks to a grovelling reversal, a cancellation of the tax plans and now desperate concessions on minimum wage etc in order to halt the mayhem.
Of course Macron, who is currently facing the lowest poll approval figures of any European leader, should have seen it coming, nut nonetheless I do love the way the French public take to the streets and storm the bastille whenever some cockwomble from the political class thinks they are better than the public.
Since I retired, I don’t get out as much as perhaps I should, but oh! I do enjoy a nice bit of schadenfreude.
I find myself curiously torn here. On the one hand, yes the pompous twat is getting what he deserves. On the other hand, he is right about making reforms to things like the labour laws.
I guess it’s a case of ordering in more popcorn.
The real issue here is not so much the tax increase on fuels, it’s all the rest of it as well. White working class and middle class people who have suffered at the hands of globalism. The jobs outsourced, if they’re unlucky, or their wages stagnated if not. What little jobs they do have left are low paid and require travel, and all to subsidise an invasion by 3rd world, 7th century, low IQ barbarians who try to kill them. Then some people wonder why Orban, Trump and Salvini are so popular.
Quite so. However, hiring and firing is difficult and expensive in France, exacerbating this situation as it makes getting a job that much more difficult. A reform of the labour market and the associated tax regime is long overdue.
The hiring and firing is neither here nor there. These are a people who are desperate, who have been forced into a corner.
The hiring and firing comment related to the restrictive employment law in France. It is at the heart of why these people are so desperate.
Brilliant reply Rapscallion. I quite agree with all you have written !
Gosh, things must be bad for you to praise the Iron Lady. 🙂
I grew up to the vote in the 70’s and thus have a very Thatcherite outlook. I well remember the pwoer cuts, the piles of garbage and unburied bodies/delayed funerals. After a decade of that, from both sides, she put a stop to it. She is indeed, a hero.
But I disagree with you over the pyjama boy grannybanger and the cause of his just deserts.
I don’t see the majority of the protests coming from the anti-Thatcher side, though they add to it. Most of the anger is coming from the Elite versus the People, and the Carbon tax ecofreakery.As long as he tries to peddle his false gods at the Peoples expense, expect the mob to be busy. I wonder if their hangman does a call-out service, there’s one or two local customers….
Oh, I don’t doubt that it’s multi faceted. However, until France reconciles itself to massive reform, this will continue to fester.
For once Longrider, you are completely missing the bigger picture, It isn’t about reform at all, It’s about a people who have been pushed to the brink by being smeared, ridiculed, made unemployed, invaded, shot and now taxed to pay for it all.
Yes that too. However, you have to go back to the basics of how the French economy is run and managed. It is highly autocratic and over taxed across the board. Even private enterprise is so tightly regulated that taking on employees is prohibitive for a small business. This has been festering for decades. Successive governments have done little more than tinker at the edges.
So, yes, what you are saying is true enough, but until someone takes the core issues in hand and liberates the labour market, those people will continue to be desperate even if the invaders were all packed off back to where they came from.
I guess another way of looking at it is this: the cultural enrichment issue is occurring all over Europe. Yet the riots are only happening in France. The stuff I mention was a power keg. Mass immigration and terror were the spark that finally set it off.
This piece at Law and Liberty nicely sums up France’s problems.
Yup, that’s pretty much how I see it.
1970s? 1960s more like.
Except Macron has not introduced any economic structural reforms, he has tinkered a bit round the edges with social security and taxes which give with one hand and take back with the next, then distracted everyone, including himself, by setting himself against Trump as saviour of the Paris climate change nonsense and thus the increase fuel tax which followed an unsuccessful attempt by Hollande to introduce a carbon tax, which also caused riots.
The mains problems in the French economy, are it is dominated by Government involvement with about 40% working for the State in comfortable, well paid non-jobs for life with early retirement on fat pensions. They are unionised and accept no change to the status quo. Next group is the farmers. Agriculture is far more a part of the economy and society than the UK. Many farms survive only on CAP subsidy, without which France’s rural and thus national economy would collapse.
The private sector is over-regulated and over-taxed. Start-up is virtually impossible as is innovation because the rules do not allow things to be done differently.
Shops and businesses close for two hours in the middle of the day. Stores often have gaps on the shelves; you have to buy what they have not what you want or visit multiple stores to find common place items.
It is a Country that believes the economy and business is there to provide jobs; workers’ interests are paramount and placed above the interests of consumers.
The young and brightest are leaving for the UK, Belgium, USA, Canada so France’s future is leaving.
No President or politicians can change this because over the decades an economic and socially conservative France has been cast in stone, one that believes money grows on trees, that just because there is a recession or economic difficulty, that is no reason to stop spending more and more.
Only complete economic meltdown will change France. It needs to be out of the EU and finally opened up to competition for the first time since the 1860s before it cancelled its free trade agreement with the UK.
Painful? It certainly will be.
And the EU is modelled on the French way.
Yup. This.