Bruno Bonnell is an MP and founder member of the president’s party, La Republique En Marche. He says the gilets jaunes could emerge as the new opposition to Emmanuel Macron.

Now, that divided opposition has been replaced by a social movement that has also united people from left and right, in the same way that Macron did - along with many of those who are disillusioned with traditional politics altogether.

President Macron won last year’s election by cannibalising France’s traditional centre-right and centre-left parties. It deepened splits within the remaining opposition - and has helped keep the political opposition in check ever since.

“This [movement] looks like ours did originally,” he said in the lobby of the National Assembly. “I remember En Marche when people were saying we had no programme and we didn’t know where we were going. We were debating in bars and cafes, trying to reinvent the world.

“This movement is more about resistance, it’s populist like the Five Star movement or Podemos, but if they gather effectively with leaders and representatives, then we’ll finally face a clearer opposition.”

He says he had visited protest sites many times to ask, specifically, what demonstrators wanted, but that every proposal he made was rejected.

“We are now beyond that. It’s a political conversation, not a conversation about money or compassion.”

Some protesters see a future as a political party. But so far, diversity has been the movement’s appeal - the right of each of its 10,000 members to speak only for themselves. Distrust of representatives is so strong that even the few spokespeople to emerge have come under heavy criticism, even death threats.

But without a leader, or a cohesive agenda, what future does this movement have?

“The leader ought to be the president of France,” Anthony Joubert, one of the founders of the movement, says. “It’s he who has to understand us. He should be spending his time listening, instead of creating a situation where restaurants can charge 15 euros for a bottle of water. As things stand the gilets jaunes are leading ourselves. We are an assembly. We are a national assembly.”