The French have a word for pressing on to the bitter end without considering the consequences: jusqu’au-boutisme (to the end-ism). It’s a refusal to recognise when you have lost; a refusal also to recognise when you’ve won.

The gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement, which has shaken French democracy to its foundations in recent weeks, has won a considerable victory. President Emmanuel Macron, a man not for turning, told the nation in a solemn televised address on Monday night that he had seen the error of his ways.

Macron bows to protesters' demands and says: I know I have hurt some of you Read more

He offered €15bn in financial relief for angry people from “peripheral France” who have been blocking provincial roundabouts and protesting on the streets of Paris and other cities since 17 November. His offer included a de facto 6% increase in the minimum wage, a tax-free Christmas bonus for low-earners and the partial abolition of a hated new tax on pensions. The statement went further than many expected. An instant poll found that more than half the French population, hugely supportive of the yellow vests until now, thought the rebellion should end.

It won’t – not immediately, anyway. France faces many more weeks, and possibly months, of economically crippling disruption and violence. A large part of the yellow vest movement is now determined to go jusqu’au-bout. It is no longer a social protest with practical demands. It has been fired up by its own absolutist rhetoric, by fake news spread on social media, and by the camaraderie of the streets and roundabouts.

The gilets jaunes believe, fantastically, that they can bring down representative government in France and replace it with a bottom-up government of the people. Such apocalyptic ambitions are normal enough for the gangs of young men of the ultra-left and ultra-right who wreaked most of the damage in a third weekend of rioting in Paris and other French cities on Saturday. They are bizarre and dangerous aims for the mainstream revolutionaries – garage mechanics, retired building contractors, home carers, small entrepreneurs – who make up the bulk of the officially leaderless yellow vest movement.

By my own observation, a different category of yellow vests invaded Paris last weekend. They were less violent than the men and women who poured into the capital from struggling towns in northern and western France the week before. They resembled the well-behaved people who have picketed roundabouts and motorway tollbooths all over France for three weeks. That may signal a calming of the mood and sweeping ambition of the hi-vis hordes, but I doubt it. The yellow vests have given their once-invisible wearers a visibility and a sense of power that they are reluctant to surrender.

A 25-point gilet jaune manifesto circulated last week. The manifesto is “unofficial” but mirrors the jumble of statist and non-statist ideas that win viral support on yellow vest “anger” groups on the internet. A halving of all taxes; massive new spending on rural areas and suburbs; a 40% increase in the minimum wage and welfare payments; the repudiation of the national debt; departure from the European Union and Nato; popular referendums for all laws; and tough restrictions on migration.

Gilets jaunes say that the rebellion is not just about Macron. It is about 40 years of neglect of peripheral France. It is about distrust of all parties, including the established far right and far left; it is about distrust of the “official” media. It is about persistent unemployment; welfare cuts; low wages; high prices and high taxes. Macron is certainly a large part of the problem. Something about his cocksure manner infuriates people outside France’s 22 booming metropolitan areas.

When he was elected last year, the young president promised to create new opportunities for forgotten parts of France. His reforms are – or were – beginning to work. Job creation is climbing; youth unemployment is falling; average wages are inching upwards.

Macron’s founding error, acknowledged in his TV address last night, was to try to boost investment by frontloading his five-year term with tax breaks for the rich. Tax breaks for poor and lower-earning citizens were planned next year or in 2020. They have now been rushed forward.

The internet did not “create” the gilets jaunes. The anger and suffering is genuine. The magnifying and isolating power of social media turned a longstanding sense of regional and class injustice into a self-righteous, impractical, leaderless revolution that is unlikely to bring real relief to rural or outer-suburban France.

France’s political crises are always played out in riots – unlike Britain’s | Simon Jenkins Read more

The gilets jaunes “anger groups” are now being targeted by virulent propaganda generated by US “alt-right” and Russian bots. France, they are told, is to be “handed over” to the UN. The French constitution is void. Macron is an illegitimate president. Hundreds of fake images circulate of alleged French police violence.

Part of the movement may be prepared to respond positively to Macron’s U-turn. Many thousands of other gilets jaunes have wound themselves up, or have been wound up, to go to jusqu’au bout of their very odd revolution.

In Britain there is a tendency, especially on the Eurosceptic right, to giggle at the yellow vests. “Tee-hee. Serve that arrogant, lesson-preaching Emmanuel Macron right.” But the worrying lessons of the revolt go well beyond France. They point to the fragility of democratic institutions in a viral age.