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Isolated from news, I mapped out the one thing I always do when visiting the French capital: a trip to the Place de l’Alma, where a gilded replica of the flame of the Statue of Liberty has been placed. More significantly for me, it also overlooks the road where Diana Spencer, ex-wife of the then-Prince of Wales, died in a car crash on Aug. 31, 1997. I enjoyed the frisson of mischief: I’d be paying homage to the late princess on the eve of Charles’s journey to Paris with the woman who broke up their marriage. It would be my own private episode of The Crown.
All that narcissism was dispelled by the cancellation of the royal visit. It was a sensible thing for Charles and Camilla to do given the unrest. A royal tour as the populace was in broad rebellion was too reminiscent of 17th and 18th-century turmoil. Let them eat cake, as Marie Antoinette or some other French aristocrat allegedly said. Indeed, Charles I of England lost his head in 1649 after he was defeated and captured by the forces of a rebellious parliament. The Windsors, however, are far from the powers their predecessors were. The divine right of kings is dusty — if melodramatic — history.
But there is an institution akin to old-fashioned kingship involved in all this: the French presidency. Like leaders of his country before him — Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mitterrand and others — Emmanuel Macron has used the constitutional powers embodied in his person as president to get his way. Indeed, the already substantial ire provoked by his pension and retirement reform was further inflamed by his override of parliament a few days ago. L’etat c’est moi, as Louis XIV allegedly said.
The French may have a way with apocryphal quotes, but they aren’t having Macron’s autocracy. You can smell the dissent in Paris. Garbage bins spill what should be contained onto the street — and most of the rubbish is uncollected because sanitation workers have walked out. The gilets jaunes are gathering again this weekend. The gate of Bordeaux’s city hall was set on fire last night. I’m worried I won’t be able to return to my flat in London on the Eurostar. (Yes, this is still about me.)
Seriously, though, I’m past what was the minimum retirement age of 62 in France and, well, I’m still working and quite like it. So I can’t really fault Macron’s push for longer-lived productivity. But couldn’t he have practiced some patience?
I’m a status-quo radical: I mean, I don’t like boats being rocked. Rebellions can be infectious and have painful consequences. French and English revolutions have a way of feeding into each other. Louis XIV faced down the Fronde, a series of rebellions that threatened his throne, just as his relative Charles was executed by the English revolution. The art of anti-royal pamphleteering — rabid precursor of today’s tweets and fake news — was pioneered by both the French and the English, each inspiring the other. The Fronde itself was a practice run for the upheaval that finally upended the Bourbons in 1789.
Government is hard, and history, a thankless task, is always in progress. But the boring and unrelenting work to establish widespread rapport and support is a necessary one. Resorting to autocracy will only make revolution more exhilarating. And when it becomes the only option, you don’t have to be a king to lose your head.
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Howard Chua-Eoan is the international editor of Bloomberg Opinion.
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