On social media. Dropped into café conversations from Corsica to the rural centre of France. Two words that summed up a mood: sheer exasperation.

The spark was an austerity plan announced in early July by François Bayrou, prime minister since 2024 and a long-standing figure of the centre right.

Officially, it was about reducing the deficit and saving the French welfare state. In practice, it meant a freeze on pensions and benefits, cuts to public services, fewer civil servants, and a stealth tax rise through frozen thresholds.

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But the measure that really got people seething was the scrapping of a couple of public holidays, Easter Monday and May 8. The argument was that the French worked fewer hours than the Germans and had to make up the difference.

If you want to spark outrage in France, tell people they must sacrifice again by working more, as seen during the 2023 pension reform protests, which triggered some of the largest demonstrations in decades.

The proposed loss of public holidays struck a nerve because it fed a familiar resentment: more and more people feel it is always the same who are asked to make the effort, while the privileged are spared. That’s why “Block everything” caught fire.

For anyone who remembers the winter of 2018- 19, one comparison is obvious: the Yellow Vests. Their protests started with a fuel tax. Within weeks, they had become a revolt against the cost of living, unfair taxes, and a political system seen as deaf to ordinary people. As French journalist Edwy Plenel, founder of investigative news website Mediapart, put it, the Yellow Vests were a “pure eruption”: unpredictable, uncontrollable, without a set agenda.

They didn’t come from unions or parties, but from the margins – from social media, roundabouts, everyday struggles. That was their power, and also what frightened the government: there was no leader to negotiate with, no traditional organisation behind.

But that same spontaneity created doubts. The left hesitated to throw itself in, partly because of the small but visible presence of far-right groups on the fringes of some protests. That hesitation lasted long enough to leave a scar.

Many came away with the sense that the left had stood aside, and that the far right had managed to present itself as the heir to a revolt that was never truly its own. That memory still weighs today. Each time a leaderless movement rises, the question comes back: who will give it shape? Will it stay open and plural?

The genealogy of “block everything” makes those fears easy to understand. The very first call came not from the left, but from a small northern group called Les Essentiels, with a far-right bent. They floated the idea of shutting down the country on September 10, but their message remained fringe.

What changed things was July’s austerity plan. Suddenly the slogan was everywhere, stripped of nationalist references and turned into something more straightforward: “It’s always the same people who pay.”

From there, it went viral. The group that now dominates, tellingly called Indignons-nous! (“Let us be indignant!”), in homage to left-wing moral voice Stephane Hessel, insists on no hate, no party takeover, just opposition to austerity.

So yes, the origins were murky. But what is striking now is how it has been reclaimed. The central message is social, not nationalist: a refusal to accept endless sacrifice from the same groups, while others are protected.

That makes “block everything” more than just a French story. It raises a question that concerns all democracies: what do we do with popular anger?

Antonio Gramsci once wrote: “The old world is dying, the new struggles to be born, and in the interregnum monsters appear.”

Anger is raw energy. It can become a democratic force if directed against inequality and injustice. Or it can sour into hate, if channelled by those who point fingers at migrants, minorities, or the poor.

Plenel makes a similar point: if progressives vacate the terrain of anger, the far right will take it. And when it does, anger turns into resentment, and resentment into legitimacy for exclusion.

Coming back to the UK, the contrast couldn’t be sharper. Here too, anger is real – it comes from the cost of living, sky-high rents, hollowed-out local services. But the protests most visible in recent weeks haven’t been about austerity. They’ve been outside the hotels that house asylum seekers.

Sometimes they dress themselves up as social protests, such as housing shortages. But the language slips very quickly into xenophobia: foreigners are “taking over places”, “threatening security”.

We know this isn’t true. Britain’s housing crisis is decades in the making: underinvestment, deregulation, financialisation. Social housing has melted like snow under the sun since the 1980s, councils have been starved of funds, and homes have been treated as assets rather than a basic necessity.

Asylum seekers stuck in hotels are not the cause of the crisis.

(Image: PA)

So yes, anger is present in both countries. But it manifests itself in different ways. Why does this matter for Scotland? Because the question of what we do with anger runs through our politics as well.

Looking at France is a reminder that anger can be turned into a constructive force, if it is recognised and given direction. If it isn’t, it will find another way out.

On September 10, we’ll see if France manages to turn its exasperation into something unifying. It may fizzle out. Or it may be a turning point, a reinvention of the country’s politics from below. Either way, the message for us in Scotland is already clear: anger doesn’t vanish just because we choose not to see it. It always looks for a channel. If progressives won’t provide one, others will.

Now, the stakes have risen dramatically. This week, Bayrou announced he will seek a vote of confidence in parliament on September 8 — just two days before the planned day of action.

With no majority and near-record unpopularity, his fall looks almost certain. Both the left and the far right have pledged to vote against him. Analysts already call it “political hara-kiri”.

For many, the timing is no accident. If Bayrou falls, his budget falls with him, and with it, the most provocative measures.

Some suspect this gambit is also a way to defuse the anger in the streets: if the plan dies in parliament, perhaps the need to “block everything” will feel less urgent. Will that calculation work?

I won’t be marching on September 10 because I live in Scotland. But I’ll be watching closely, and with a certain envy.

Because it’s a reminder of something universal: anger can be political energy. Left to the far right, it curdles into resentment. But if welcomed and listened to, it can reopen the space of possibility.