When Notre Dame burned, something in the flames seemed to speak to the combustibility of our age. Nothing is for ever, the fire said, even those edifices – stone or institutional – that we assume will always be there. In almost every democracy, there are similar forces of backlash and disaffection. The anger is diffuse and the discontents vary, but there is a general agitation that seems to boil down to the feeling that someone should do something.
At the moment, France seems to have crystallised this phenomenon in a way that other democracies might draw both warnings and lessons from. Will François Bayrou last longer as prime minister than Michel Barnier? Perhaps. But the basic impediment remains: the country is politically split roughly into thirds (and the “left” is split among itself), with the end result that creating a majority for anything is almost impossible.
