Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is set for serious social unrest

(Getty)

So it’s Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen once again, and for many millions of French that is a deeply depressing prospect. There were violent protests in the Brittany city of Rennes shortly after the result of the first round of voting was announced, as an estimated 500 people vented their anger against ‘fascism’ and ‘capitalism’.

Around the same time I received a call from my sister-in-law in the south of France. She was in despair, this working-class socialist, at once more being forced to choose between Macron and Le Pen.

But it’s her ilk who will decide the outcome of the second round on 24 April. Jean-Luc Mélenchon received 21.9 per cent of the vote – approximately 7.6 million ballots – of whom the majority were 18 to 34 year-olds. He polled best among this demographic, while Le Pen topped the count among the 35 to 64 age range (she was second to Mélenchon among those aged 25 to 34). The only age group dominated by Macron was the over 65s, where he was by some margin the most popular candidate.

Whoever wins on Sunday week they will have to preside over a country that is fractured, fed up and spoiling for a fight

This is dangerously unhealthily.

Those whose working lives are over, those on – in general – comfortable pensions with no mortgage are content with the incumbent. This is also the demographic who most approved of Macron’s draconian Covid measures, the passport, the masks, the shutting down of society. This is the generation of ‘Soixante-huitards’, Baby Boomers to Brits. Half a century ago they were radicals and revolutionaries but in their dotage they are rather smitten with their ‘president of the rich’.

A good many senior citizens did not vote for Macron, of course, but they tended to be working-class men and women, highlighting the ominous faultline that has appeared in France in the last five years.

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