French president postponed his address to the nation but the stakes have been raised

The broadcast was ready to go. Emmanuel Macron’s address to the nation in response to months of protest and violence from the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement and the “great national debate” they sparked had been recorded that afternoon and was due to go live at 8pm.

Running to 26 minutes, it was, said Le Monde, “a make-or-break moment for the presidency and for this president, confronted […] with one of the most serious social crises the country has known for 30 years”.

But just before 7pm, the first flames began licking the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral. After a moment’s hesitation, Macron pulled the broadcast, tweeting his sorrow “at seeing a part of us all burn this evening”.

Three hours later, he was on the steps of the cathedral, telling a shell-shocked nation that Notre Dame was France’s “history, our literature, the epicentre of our life, the cathedral of every French person”, and promising to rebuild it, “because it is what our history deserves, and it is our destiny”.

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Analysts said that the dramatic blaze, and the extraordinary national outpouring of emotion that it provoked, could prove both a boon and a threat to the reformist, pro-business Macron, whose presidency was for a while on the ropes over the gilets jaunes crisis.

“On the one hand, it’s been good for Macron,” said one leading analyst, François Heisbourg of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “He showed he had the right reflexes in postponing his planned speech, and this catastrophe certainly offers him the chance to play the presidential role of bringing the nation together.”

However, Heisbourg said, the sheer force of public reaction to the great cathedral’s partial destruction revealed “a country that has suffered an accumulation of traumas. France is, politically and socially, in a very fragile state”. This had significantly raised the stakes for the speech on the gilets jaunes when Macron finally delivers it, he said.

Bruno Cautrès of Cevipof, the centre for political research at Paris’s prestigious Sciences Po university, said the young president’s reaction to the blaze had “above all shown how he intends to deal with, and move on from, the gilets jaunes crisis”.

Macron’s emphasis on a profound, long-term transformation of France could ultimately be well served by the disaster, Cautrès argued.

“He may be able to use it to consolidate his core arguments: the call for peace and unity, the overriding need to get the country pulling together, moving forward in a ‘national project’. There’s much to rebuild in France: that’s the message.”

Bruno Tertrais of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris said the disaster might allow Macron a “Mitterandian moment” to “make his mark on Paris”, but was unlikely to have a profound impact on the politics of the presidency.

“Yes, there has been an outpouring of unity and emotion,” Tertrais said. “But we all know such moments of national unity are short-lived – and I don’t think Macron is under any illusion this will last particularly long.”

Tertrais said that if Macron could pull off the challenge of rebuilding Notre Dame within five years “that would perhaps transform a crisis into some form of opportunity. But politically, the postponement of the speech doesn’t really matter”.

The pulled speech was to mark the conclusion of Macron’s great debate, an unprecedented three-month national consultation involving more than two million online contributions and some 10,000 hours of town hall debates around the country.

Beginning last November as a mainly rural protest against fuel taxes and falling purchasing power, the gilets jaunes revolt soon became an uprising against Macron and the French establishment, triggering riots in Paris and other big cities with a violence not seen since the May 1968 student uprising.

Presenting the findings of the debate last week, the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, said the principal theme to emerge from the debate was “huge exasperation” over tax. “We need to lower taxes and lower them faster,” he said.

Other demands to emerge from the process included restoring the connections between urban and provincial France, introducing more grassroots democracy, and tackling climate change without penalising the poor.

The question of how the government would lower taxes while also meeting French demands for better public services closer to home was to be left to Macron – whose eagerly awaited proposals were due on Monday.

French media have said a string of measures are planned, including reducing the number of MPs; introducing more proportional representation and local referendums; guaranteeing no further school or hospital closures; and cutting income tax.

Perhaps most symbolically, Macron is also said to be considering scrapping the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), France’s renowned elite finishing school for senior civil servants, prime ministers and presidents.

But in the wake of the Notre Dame disaster, a shopping list of reforms may no longer be enough, Heisbourg said.

“The speech will have to be different from what he had planned,” he said. “The country needs, badly, a sense of direction. The public will be receptive to that, I think. But if they do not get it … this could prove to be a very important moment indeed.”