Gavin Mortimer

I met a friend for lunch in Paris last Sunday. He and his wife had come up from the countryside for a weekend’s shopping. As we sat down, their nerves were still frayed from the previous day. It was, they told me, the most terrifying few hours of their lives. Trapped between the rioters and the police, they retreated to their hotel, where staff instructed them to stay in their room. The mob soon arrived and against a background noise of helicopters, police sirens, breaking glass and detonations, they tried unsuccessfully to force their way inside the hotel while singing an ode to the Révolution. It has been said that the gilets jaunes movement is to Emmanuel Macron what the miners’ strike was to Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1980s. Not in the slightest.

Marine Le Pen spent last Saturday commenting on the scenes from the Champs-Elysées as the latest Gilets Jaunes demonstration turned violent. She also had the opportunity to respond to Christophe Castaner, the interior minister who, as cobbles rained down on the heads of the riot police, accused Le Pen of inciting the far-right to go on the rampage. Le Pen rejected the allegations, saying she had done no such thing; and anyway, as far as the National Rally leader was concerned, the people running amok in the capital weren't from the far-right.

Out and about in Paris on Saturday I passed scores of protestors on their way to the Champs-Élysées to vent their fury against Emmanuel Macron. Wearing their gilet jaunes (yellow vests), they were angry, determined and overwhelmingly white and middle-aged. The nationwide protest that pulled in nearly 300,000 demonstrators has been billed as a pushback against rising fuel tax but it goes much deeper than that; it's the revolt of the people against a president they believe holds them in contempt. As one demonstrator told Le Figaro: 'Macron is the president of the rich and not the poor. He should think also about the poor.' Macron rarely thinks about the poor, except to insult them.

Emmanuel Macron's hosting of sixty world leaders in Paris last weekend to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice has turned into a public relations disaster. The president of the Republic not only infuriated Donald Trump, but he also put the Serbian president's nose out of joint. According to reports, Aleksandar Vucic was not amused with the seating arrangements at Sunday's service of remembrance. While Kosovo's president Hashim Thaçi was behind the leaders of France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, Vucic was shunted off to the side. "You can imagine how I felt," Thaci is quoted as telling the Serbian media. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing before me, knowing the sacrifice that the Serbian people made in World War One.

Emmanuel Macron was elated when France won the World Cup in July. The photograph of him leaping out of his seat at the Moscow stadium showed a leader at the peak of his power. Or so he thought. Ever since then, he has been bumping back to earth. Last week, the French President took the unusual step of retiring to Honfleur for four days’ rest and recuperation. ‘His face has changed, he is marked by the weight of power,’ confided one of his team; another expressed concern about the President’s weight loss. Part of his deterioration is self-inflicted. Macron likes to boast that he gets by on four hours of sleep, and his texts to ministers in the early hours are legendary.

As chalices go, few are as poisoned as the one Emmanuel Macron has just handed Christophe Castaner. Minister of the interior is one of the most challenging posts in government. The former Socialist MP has cultivated an image over the years of a political tough guy, in contrast to his predecessor, the diminutive Gérard Collomb. But what passes for tough in the National Assembly won't intimidate the tough guys in France's inner cities. During his eighteen months in the post, Collomb was a diligent minister, but in the end the 71-year-old was worn down by the enormity of his task. He parted with a message that should cause his successor a few sleepless nights.

The Jewish New Year begins on Sunday and to mark the festival of Rosh Hashanah, Emmanuel Macron visited the Grand Synagogue in Paris on Tuesday. It was the first time that a president of France has attended and although he didn't give an address (that would breach the laïcité protocol) Macron's gesture was appreciated by the chief rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia. "You are like the Wailing Wall," Korsia told the president. "We confide in you our hopes and our sorrows and although we get no response we know that somebody hears us". Joël Mergui, the president of the Israelite central consistory of France, was more forthright when he spoke. "Our children are leaving," he said, referring to the 20,000 plus Jews who have emigrated to Israel in the last four years.