President Emmanuel Macron of France was elected on an anti globalist, get tough on migration platform.   An independent contender in the election, he pulled off an impressive feat as an outsider no one had really heard of before, winning in the second round against conservative Marine Le Penn.  With the help of a massive mainstream media campaign to discredit and attack Le Pen, this is where we should all have been a bit suspicious. Mainstream media?, supporting a reasonable stance on migration and an anti globalist agenda?  Did they forget who they work for?.  Despite being a globalist banker, he was able to pull off one of the biggest publicity coup of the last 20 years.   Somehow, he positioned himself as the almost complete opposite, of what he actually seems to believe and waltzed into the highest position in France out of nowhere.   This is what it is to have friends in the highest places and be seen as the man to do as instructed, presumably.

This is a man that once complained that ‘African women have too many baby’s’ in public.  A candid moment which now seems, perhaps a little too convenient.

However, the alarm bells should have begun ringing out in France the moment he took power.  This is a French President that walked into office, not to the French national anthem, but to the EU anthem.
Yet no one seemed to realise they had been had.  Yet.

Today, Macron’s approval rating is one of the lowest in the world and certainly the lowest in Europe by a mile.  At 18%, it is incredible that this President, loathed by his own people, does not do the right thing and resign.   Incredibly, he manages to just nudge out the UK’s Theresa May for most unpopular leader in Europe.  Outside of the wonderful, Guy Verhofstadht of course.  He is the gift that just keeps on giving. More on his recent rants against nations being reluctant to hand him even more power over their country’s in another post.

But resistance in France has been growing and it has now reach truly epic proportions in the form of France’s yellow jacket movement led by Eric Drouet. 

In November 17 the ‘Yellow Jackets’ blockaded 2,500 road junctions.  Vehicles were overturned and government property attacked by an estimated 300,000 protestors. 

The following week, blockades continues with an estimated 20-30,000 taking part in Paris alone.   Images of events at these protests are pretty clear and the anger is palpable.  They have had enough.  This is a people that feel like they are being robbed by their political class.   In one video protestors use a piece of heavy machinery to pick up a burning vehicle and ram it into what appears to be a motorway toll booth.

Diesel taxes have risen at an incredible rate in already heavily taxed France and as protestors point out, ‘the government excuse for this is as an environmental measure’.  Diesel has now risen 23% in one year alone.  However, they cite far more effective measures which could be taken to address far higher contributors to greenhouse gases, including power production, aviation and the shipping industry which seem to escape these measures unscathed.   When it comes to taxation, many protestors point to the corporations and even the EU as those that fail to contribute their fair share.    Some protestors cite government campaigns and the drive TOWARDS diesel cars which turned out to be a huge mistake after a US investigation into German Car makers such as VW and AUDI demonstrated emissions several hundred times greater than published.

These protestors are largely, but not exclusively, made up of 30 and 40 something people that are on the low to mid tier in terms of earnings.  Very often they are from rural towns and villages and live lives not too dissimilar to generations before them.  In the past they were able to make a living and provide for their families, living in the place they grew up and which generations of their family before lived and died.   Now, they feel increasing pressure to move into the city and take relatively menial jobs.   As many point out, the places which they would be forced to live in the city are not safe and not places that they would want to bring their children to.  They do not understand why they need to pay higher and higher taxes in order to fund benefits for new arrivals which cannot work.   This was the final straw, the step too far.  Imagine being a farmer struggling to make ends meet under the burden of already high taxation and pressure from huge corporate interests.  You then get a tax rise of 23% on a key consumable of your business in a single year.  You are forced to make cuts, often in labour and other areas which has a knock on effect to everybody in rural communities.

So perhaps it is unsurprising that the Yellow Jackets have vowed to continue their protests until their demands are met. They have already won concessions concerning the diesel tax, which has not been stopped in its track but they also want to stop being treated as indentured servants, there to pay for others to their own detriment. 

One interesting element of this movement is the sheer scale, which is the largest France has seen in the modern era.  But it goes further than even the sheet scale of the movement.  This is a movement with members across the political spectrum who have aligned under a common cause.   They simply want to defend their right to exist and be able to provide for their families as generations did before.  They government have patronised and tried to spin the reason for these taxes and it isnt working.  The people are under no illusions concerning why these taxes are necessary.

To this end their list of demands include the following very reasonable terms:

• Migrants that are not approved as genuine asylum seekers should be escorted back to their place of origin.
• Migrants must be integrated into France.   To achieve, this they believe that the state should commitment to ensuring that successful asylum seekers are able to play an active role in their new country.  To help them do this the state should provide lessons in French language, history and standards of behaviour and that their should be a test and accreditation at the end.  Similar to the citizenship tests in many other countries.

Notice that the protestors are not asking for no migration. Simply controlled migration with a common sense approach and even advocating for a better method than the utter chaos seen across Europe thanks to Macron, Merkel and the EU.  Only recently Macron, who campaigned on a ‘touch on migration’ stance told the press that Europe has room for 200 Million more.  It must be nice to live in his world, where resources are infinite and 2 continents can be completely and irrevocably destabilised on a whim without consequences.

Eric Drouet, leader of the Yellow Jackets,  commented this week that ‘they would like to go to the Elysee’.  Meaning the Elysee palace, seat of government.  Adding fuel to the rumours that there is a plan to invade the palace and stage a protest inside.  In response, Emmanuelle Macron allegedly has plans to bring 65,000 police to the capital to make sure that the working class, never get to see the beauty of the Elysee Palace. 

It seems that although he expects everyone else to welcome guests he invited, he himself, it not at home to guests for the time being.  I hope that like those guests that sometimes turn up at awkward moments unannounced, the Yellow Jackets invite themselves for tea.

This all reminds me of the fateful prediction of the former minister of the interior in France when he predicted that France is 5 years away from total societal collapse.  When that happens, we know from history how that plays out for the likes of Macron who edges ever closer to that shining guillotine by the day.  Again, like Britain’s Theresa May, anyone with an iota of decency would resign when their approval rating hits such dismal lows such as this.