French elites cannot thwart the popular will forever

President Emmanuel Macron’s disastrous snap election, the first round of which took place on Sunday, bears comparison with David Cameron’s decision to call the Brexit referendum in 2016. In fairness to Cameron, it should be recalled that he had long held out the promise of a referendum. He had to keep it eventually. Macron, by contrast, was under no moral obligation to command the election of a new national assembly just because his party had done badly in the European …