00:00Well, for more on this story, we can bring in Benoit Dillet, who's a senior lecturer in politics, languages and international studies at the University of Bath.
00:08Thank you very much for speaking to us on France 24.
00:11I'd like to start by this scale of today's protests, hundreds of thousands, almost a million, as James Andre just mentioned there.
00:21How much of a test is this for the new prime minister?
00:30Sorry, he's only been nominated since last week as a prime minister. Thank you for having me. Sorry, I was muted at the beginning.
00:42And I think what we are facing right now in France is a fiscal crisis and a political crisis.
00:48And these protests are a pretty common sight in France.
00:52But here today, we get the sense that there's real anger on the street about a range of different issues, as we've said.
00:59Is there something about this movement that stands out to you?
01:03Yes, I think it's very much in continuation with the pension reform strikes that we witnessed two years ago.
01:10So it's a lot more, if you want, scattered or distributed throughout France, which is a kind of inheritance from the yellow vest movement in 2018 and 2019.
01:20It's no longer simply concentrated or focused on the Paris capital, but it's really spread out in smaller towns.
01:27What we saw in the pension reform strikes and demonstrations, where some towns you had about, some towns of 80,000 inhabitants, you had around 50,000 people demonstrating.
01:37So very, very large gathering in smaller towns as well that need to be taken into account.
01:43And we can compare today's protests also to a more informally organized action last week that kind of failed to block everything, as they said they wanted to do.
01:53What do today's demos need to achieve in order to qualify as a success?
01:58That's a very good question.
02:02And I think it will be, you know, only time will tell.
02:05I think the main demand is very much for Macron to go.
02:11The presidential elections are a little less than two years away.
02:15And the French people are really impatient and they simply want a change.
02:21They want a change and they also are at the same time disillusioned by all the promises of change that Emmanuel Macron and the numerous prime ministers have said every single time.
02:30So Le Cornu is supposed to be someone who wants to listen, who wants to have compromise, but it doesn't really cut it now with the French people.
02:39They are really disillusioned with the political class.
02:41Right. And not only is Macron unlikely to resign, I mean, you can tell me if you disagree, but also this new prime minister that he's nominated is meant to be a Macron loyalist.
02:54That's right. So it's it's difficult on both sides in a way for the protesters or for the even the politicians in the opposition, let's say the left.
03:03They don't want to make alliances with Le Cornu because that will basically be a mistake with the site of the presidential election in 20 in two years, in 2027.
03:14And at the same time, Macron, we're not sure if he's going to dissolve the National Assembly.
03:19He can now since June last June this year.
03:22So there could be early parliamentary elections, but it's not really clear that we'll get something different, the configuration which is different than the current hanged parliament with three main parties or movements, if you want.
03:34The radical left, the centre right, as well as the far right.
03:39It doesn't look like the parliament could be any different.
03:42So therefore, it's a kind of game of patience for the next, if you want, 18 months to two years.
03:47And as we mentioned, Le Cornu is meeting with unions and other members of the opposition.
03:53What do you think it's going to take to get, well, notably the socialists or any other party on board so that he, too, doesn't get struck down by a no confidence vote?
04:05Yes. So it's unprecedented.
04:08Lots of unprecedented things happened in the last couple of years.
04:12So we've seen first, obviously, three, well, two prime ministers that have received votes of confidence, and it was unprecedented in the Fifth Republic.
04:21And the fact that also Macron basically nominated people not who didn't come first in the parliamentary elections.
04:35And really, it is for the turn of the left to govern at this point.
04:39So you're absolutely right.
04:40It comes down to certain policies, and one of the main policies is the so-called Zuckman tax, that the left really wants to use that as their, if you want, signature policy to move ahead.
04:50And tell us more about what that tax entails.
04:53So this is a tax of 2 percent on individuals who have a wealth of more than 100 million euros.
05:02In the last 10 to 15 years, there's been a huge increase in the wealth of billionaires.
05:08And it is to send a signal to it.
05:10First of all, it's to kind of make up for the lack of fairness, the fact that they're not really paying enough tax or income tax at all because of the way they manage their wealth.
05:21And second is to really send a signal to the 99 percent of the population that those billionaires should actually also bear some of the cost of the debt crisis at the moment, that it's only fair if the very richest pay a bit more, so 2 percent on 100 million wealth, which is not asking for a lot, while obviously their wealth increases every year by 6 to 8 percent.
05:45So they will only increase their wealth by 4 to 6 percent, which is still a huge increase.
05:51Right. So that's what the socialists want.
05:53What about the far-right national rally?
05:55Where do they come in all of this?
05:57Could they also be the kingmakers here?
06:00And does this kind of political stagnation make them look even stronger ahead of presidential elections in 2027?
06:07So the far-right, they want to basically portray that France is in crisis and it's very messy and there are, you know, bins burning in the streets and all that is obviously helping the far-right to show that there is disorder and they're going to bring the order and mostly going to focus on the anti-immigrant stance.
06:25Regarding economics, it's not very clear where they stand because their rhetoric is very much they want to be socially progressive.
06:33But when it comes to voting, the Zuckman tax was presented at the National Assembly and they voted against or they voted for an amendment that was basically going against the main idea of the tax.
06:45So therefore, they actually aligned a lot more on Macron's economic policies than they would want to admit it.
06:50All right, Benoit, thank you very much for your analysis.
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