The French Collapse

Same, same again or one for the ages?

The France of president, really egomaniac-in-chief, Emmanuel Macron is somewhere on the spectrum between “spiraling political crisis” (Financial Times), “big trouble” (The Economist) and terminal collapse. Again. Barely a week after a new if fragile government was cobbled together in acute-crisis mode, the country is bracing “for big anti-austerity street marches and labor strikes,” while the state’s finances are “pernicious” and the budget for 2026 a big question without an answer. In Paris, for instance, the Metro subway is semi-comatose; in the country as whole, a third of teachers are on strike.

An earlier wave of protests – under the slogan “Let’s block everything” – did not quite achieve that ambitious aim, but it did attract double the number of participants the authorities had expected. In that respect – even if different in their ideological background – the French protests resemble the recent “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London. On both sides of the Channel, decrepit, unpopular, unresponsive Centrist regimes are barely hanging on now.