“La France en colère” (France in anger). Over the past two years, this phrase has appeared on signboards, web sites, social media, and on the lips of politicians and the public at large. French incandescence stems from stagnant wages, income inequality that has been widening since 2000, insulated elites and an opaque bureaucracy that has created what could be described as the Great Payback. The first round of France’s presidential election is a confirmation that the lid of a political and economic pressure cooker has come off. While it wasn’t immigration or political identity on the minds of the French voter, the results should send shockwaves through the political establishment, that far-right candidates out-polled the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and have cast the Socialist and Gaullist parties, fixtures in French political culture into irrelevance.
No Comment