Why then do you think that Macron and the government being quite so intransigent, given the

massive scale of opposition to the bill? Some people have focused on the personality of Macron,

his sort of authoritarian tendencies, and perhaps a desire to achieve a victory akin to Margaret

Thatcher's over the National Union of Miners during the 1980s in Britain. It would then set the stage

for the, you know, really far-reaching

casualisation of the French workforce. Others point to the more structural factors, the EU

budgetary rules you mention, or the declining productivity that French business is experiencing.

Where would you want to place the emphasis in explaining the apparent refusal to even, you know, try to compromise?

Well, it is a bit mysterious because, as I say, he has been tactically very inept at trying

to gain the complicity of sections of the Labour movement that would have been happy to collaborate

with him on a somewhat different set of reforms. I think that one of the factors is clearly

that, yeah, I mean, there are fantasies about doing a fatten and leaving a mark. I mean, we must

remember that Macron is a lame duck president. He can't stand again at the next presidential

elections and he doesn't have a strong parliamentary majority he can rely on.

So there is, I imagine, an argument going on around him that, you know, he needs to leave a mark

through a big social, neoliberal form of this type.

On the one hand, and also the notion that if he doesn't, the divisions within his own camp,

as people start to compete to see who will be the presidential candidate for the next presidential

elections will open up, and that could completely immobilize the rest of his presidency

in terms of being able to do anything significant. That is clearly an important factor.

I think there may also be a strategic issue here, which is that, as we've discussed before, in previous discussions,

you know, Macron's support was originally, in 2017, was based on soaking up a whole number of centre-left votes, people who'd voted for the Socialist Party

...