'Very poor communicators: Macron & his govt fail to address 'genuine concerns of the French people'

Home France To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 11:40 Issued on: 20/10/2026 - 13:49 Annette Young is pleased to welcome Dr Joseph Downing, Senior Lecturer International Relations and Politics at Aston University. French unrest raises questions about political accountability, police exhaustion and the increasingly confrontational relationship between citizens and the state. Downing argues that France must reassess how the state exercises authority and responds to both violent unrest and legitimate social movements. And he draws attention to France's centralised policing culture, its revolutionary traditions and the wider threat of Russian information warfare. Keywords for this article