THE tumbrels are rolling again in France, and the crowd is restless. One by one, political leaders of the ancien régime, who had confidently been preparing to face each other at the presidential election this spring, have been carted off to the guillotine on a wave of revanchist fury. France is in the grip of what might be called " dégagisme ": a popular urge to hurl out any leader tainted by elected office, establishment politics or insider privilege. Less clear is which sort of outsider French voters want instead.
This impulse is by no means unique to France. Casualties of an anti-establishment rage are still nursing their wounds in America, Britain, Poland and other liberal democracies. But the list of French victims of this howl of anger is particularly star-studded. In recent months it has included a sitting Socialist president (François Hollande, who read the mood and declined to seek re-election), a former centre-right president (Nicolas Sarkozy, who lost his party's primary) and two ex-prime ministers (Alain Juppé and Manuel Valls, both also dispatched in a primary).
The hostility...
The Economist: Europe