To the barricades, comrades! Or at least, to the coffee machines! It’s time for a proper French strike. Rail unions have decided to shut down a large part of France’s rail network for two out of every five days for the next three months unless President Emmanuel Macron backs down on a plan to cut costs at the state-owned rail company, SNCF.

It’s hard not to dislike the smarmy, smug French president, but he does finally seem ready for his “Thatcher moment”. His attempt to get a grip of costs at the monopolistic, state-owned French railways is long overdue. He knows that they aren’t ready to compete with private and foreign operators who, thanks to EU law, must soon be allowed to bid for contracts to run parts of the network.

Per kilometre travelled, France has the second highest rail costs in Europe, according to EU figures. French passengers pay a little less than in the UK, but the state pays a vast amount more. The operating cost of French rail comes out at 60 euros per kilometre, versus a European average of 30 euros. British services, for all our moaning, are just under the average and a large portion of the spending goes on infrastructure maintenance and investment.

SNCF is a heavy and growing user of taxpayers’ money. Its total subsidy has risen by 80 per cent in nine years. Payments to pension-holders alone, who number nearly double its current employee headcount, cost £3.5 billion a year. Its 260,000 staff benefit from jobs for life, retirement at 50 or 55 and free travel for “family members”, which in practice extends from grandparents to the milkman.

This is precisely the sort of system that Jeremy Corbyn wants to replicate here. Under his rail renationalisation plan, in which private companies would be banned from bidding for new franchises after theirs expire, the whole system would revert to being a state-run monopoly. This, the Labour leader claims, rather incredibly, will save so much money that he’ll be able to cut fares, increase investment and be more generous to railway employees. SNCF has achieved only one of those aims (no prizes for guessing which) and the cost to taxpayers has been enormous.