Amid the sea of political flags, balloons and posters carried through Paris streets this week by opponents of President Emmanuel Macron, it was one by France’s small Communist party that perhaps most accurately captured the mood of the giant demonstration.
“Macron is scornful of the Republic,” it proclaimed, featuring a stone-faced president, dressed in royal regalia channelling France’s King Louis XIV, a monarch who centralized power and who his critics complained liked to bask in his own glory.
“King Emmanuel I,” as Macron is now referred to by many of his detractors, has been waging an existential fight with the country’s powerful labour movement
