The text from my wife came through at 8.35 last Thursday evening: 'Angry mob in the [Place de la] Comedie'. It was not a surprise. The massive opera house square is Montpellier's invariable venue for people gathering and things happening, angry mobs not excepted. I replied that my wife, who was in the old town for a French conversation group, should steer well clear of the Comedie. Mrs Aitken, who is wise in such matters, assured me she had no intention of going anywhere near.
In France, things don't just happen in the capital. News footage was mostly of the traditional exchange of cobblestones and tear gas in the Place de la Concorde, but there were similar spontaneous eruptions of fury in Rennes, Nantes, Lyon and Marseilles, where significant damage was inflicted on commercial premises. And also here in the socialist-run city of Montpellier.
On Monday evening, two attempts to turn the anger over the government's strong-arm approach to pension reform into political retribution both failed in the lower House of the French parliament. But no-one imagines that the unsuccessful motions of no confidence are the end of the matter.
Spontaneous eruptions of fury are not what anyone would call a rarity in France. The ability of the unions and other powerful interest groups to summon thousands to the barricades in response to any passing grievance is awe-inspiring. But it has been in exceptionally muscular use throughout Emmanuel Macron's embittered campaign to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A million and more protestors have taken to the streets in successive demonstrations. I watched one in Montpellier, where the banners and bugles were still passing me 40 minutes after the front rank set off. Waves of strikes have paralysed travel, education, public administration and much more.
Now, with the dramatic dénouement in the Assemblée Nationale – where Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had concluded minutes before the scheduled final vote that she could not win, and resorted instead to forcing the measure through under the notorious Clause 49.3 of the Constitution – it was never remotely in doubt that the riot shields and baton rounds would be in use once more.
The bigger question was how grievous and enduring the damage would be to the Macron administration just 11 months after he won re-election to the Élysée Palace for his second five-year term as President of the Republic. 'Le quinquennat est fini' – the five years are finished – was the verdict of leading academic and political commentator Michel Crespy, giving regional newspaper
Midi Libre its Friday morning headline. But is it really so bad?
There are superficial reasons for thinking not. Clause 49.3, a constant of French political discourse usually referred to as 'le quarante-neuf trois', is portrayed as the nuclear option for a government in trouble. But it is a battlefield nuclear weapon, rather than an ICBM. It has been used 100 times in the 60 years since the Fifth Republic was founded. Macron's governments have applied it a dozen times in the past six years. Borne herself needed it last year to get her budget through parliament.
Its effect is simply to avoid an unwinnable vote by pushing a measure through on the authority of the Executive. The price is that it places that very authority under threat. The usual consequence is an Assemblée vote of confidence, in this case held on Monday. Lose, and the government resigns, triggering new legislative elections. But for all the sturm und drang that attends a 49.3, this doesn't often happen. French politics is fractured and fractious, and opposition groups can usually be relied on to hate each other more than they hate the government of the day. Therefore they are profoundly reluctant to support one another's motions of confidence.
It is also true that Emmanuel Macron is a very long way from being the first President to learn the hard way that the French don't like the idea of being forced to work longer, either in hours per week or years per lifetime. Almost every country in Europe has recognised a need to increase the pension age in deference to longer life expectancies and shrinking pension pots. Germany, currently in the process of raising the threshold from 65 to 67, is already debating a further hike to 70. In France, it has never been achieved without conflict, and more often not achieved at all. Jacques Chirac's attempt ran into a three-week general strike.
The real failure has been Macron and Borne's inability to persuade people to the cause. Right back at the start of the reform process, polls showed that three-quarters of voters supported change in principle, though two-thirds doubted that Macron could get it done. Three years on, and despite numerous concessions to win over opponents, the measure is still opposed by two-thirds of the French public. It is the protestors, not the proponents, who have gained traction in popular opinion.
More than that, perhaps the worst aspect of Borne's personal torment was that it was her own group in the Assemblée that did her down. Macron's victory over Marine Le Pen in last April's presidential election was followed by a failure to renew his overall majority in parliament. If that had been widely expected, the uneasy alliance formed between the sundry left-wing and green groupings in the chamber was not. The occasional defeat was therefore always on the cards, and Borne has generally got by through ad hoc deals with the conservative Républicains.
Last Thursday, however, the Républicains were pretty well on board for the key pensions vote. What Borne's whips had to tell her, minutes before the vote, was that they could not guarantee the support of sufficient Deputies from the government's own Renaissance group. Announcement of the 49.3 saw her repeatedly shouted down in some of the ugliest scenes in the Chamber for years.
Which brings us back to Professor Crespy. Is it really all over for Macron, less than a year into his second term? Certainly, pensions were the centrepiece of his agenda, the big test of his authority and prestige. Whatever happens now, it cannot be claimed as any sort of triumph. On the contrary, it has heightened the virulent perception of him as an arrogant, elitist pal of the privileged, who cares not a fig for the views of the common herd.
If he thought that re-election in the afterglow of his assured handling of Covid had restored his popularity, he must now think again. Last April's vote did not mean that voters liked Emmanuel Macron, merely that they disliked Le Pen more. Hence calls from the left to put his pension reforms to a referendum.
Pensions were not the only item on Macron's second term agenda. Having seen his first term decisively hijacked by Covid, he has been sketching out a positive bucket list of bold and contentious legacy proposals for when he'd got past the pensions issue: constitutional entrenchment of either a 'freedom' or 'right' to abortion; a shift towards compulsory public service for teenagers; new crackdown on the €7bn black economy ('au noir'); another provocative round of regional boundary changes; even a possible reversion from the present five-year presidential term to seven years.
These are all the sort of fundamental, far-reaching changes that demand not just a functional majority in parliament but goodwill in the country. After this past week, Emmanuel Macron will find it much harder to attain or maintain either.
Keith Aitken is a journalist, writer and broadcaster
