Anti-macron riots show how Euro democracy fails
WHILE quick to find bad news at home, before then blaming Brexit, Remainer elites always overlook the challenges that confront the rest of Europe. Just consider their reaction, or lack of it, to the shocking violence and unrest that have rocked so many French cities over the past few weeks, as protesters try to stop President Macron from raising the national retirement age.
Against a backdrop of strikes that have paralysed the nation, huge numbers of demonstrators have taken to the streets and, amid flames and barricades, clashed with heavy-handed riot police.
There could scarcely be a greater humiliation for Macron, who cancelled King Charles’s planned trip to Paris because of a “risk of incidents”, and who has had to watch our monarch make his first overseas trip as King to Germany instead.
Yet on social media our wellknown Remainer elites have had nothing to say about any of this.
After all, President Macron is an EU fanatic who barely disguised his earlier determination to punish this country over Brexit, and he is not someone they want to see humiliated.
They are doing this because events across the Channel simply don’t fit their chosen narrative – what Margaret Thatcher once called the tendency to “denigrate our past, undermine our present and have no faith in our future”.
We need the EU, their line goes, because otherwise we would be in a sorry state: it was such pessimism that led us, and kept us, in the Common Market in the 1970s.
Consider the underlying cause of the protests. When our own pensionable ages were raised in 2011 and 2014 – to a higher age than Macron now wants – few eyebrows were raised.
But France still has one of the earliest retirement ages in Europe, reflecting different expectations about what the state should do.
The French have in recent years taxed and spent heavily, racking up a higher public debt than our own.
These different attitudes have origins in our national stories. This
is also true of the way in which Macron has introduced his reforms – forcing a bill through his parliament without a vote.
Such a process would be unthinkable in this country, where legislation has to get through the Houses of Commons and Lords.
Imagine the furore if Rishi Sunak tried a similar thing in the UK. Figures like Gary Lineker, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart would send Twitter into meltdown.
This fundamental contrast between France’s “Republican Monarchy”, bestowing such powers upon the president, and our own institutions, reflects our very different traditions and experiences.
The French have experienced greater governmental instability, prompting them to grant sweeping presidential powers when they set up the Fifth Republic in the 1950s.
And it also merges with a more disdainful attitude in France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere towards democracy.
Not only does democracy have shallower roots over there but it also paved the way for extremist parties – most obviously the fascists of the 1930s – to seize power.
Britain was spared this trauma, and our own strong democracy and institutions allowed us to resist and defeat fascism.
These different perspectives help to explain so much about how we see the EU. Because they can bulldoze their legislation through their
own parliament, successive French presidents have viewed the EU in the same cynical manner, confident they can impose their will on other member states and emerge as leader. We have instead prioritised compromise and negotiation.
Quick to find bad news at home, Remainer elites overlook challenges that c onfront Europe
DISILLUSIONED by its national institutions, the French general public is less likely to feel the same attachment to them as we do to our own. Our parliament, monarchy and independent judiciary are ancient and successful.
We never experienced a revolution comparable to the upheaval that convulsed France in 1789.
We are attached to our institutions in a way the French and other continentals are not, and it was for this reason that “Take Back Control” had a particular resonance during the Brexit campaign.
And our Euro-enthusiasts won’t be focusing on another aspect of the unrest in France – the violence by riot police, which respected watchdogs have described as “excessive force”.
This represents another difference between our countries – the French have a tradition of violence that we don’t – but it is not one any Rejoiner will want to know about.
Doubtlessly, too, they will overlook another Brexit win – our membership of the Trans-pacific Partnership. Once again, they will be turning a blind eye.