Is France turning back the clock to 68?

I have been living full-time in Paris for the past four years and reporting from the city for nearly 20. I have, therefore, become accustomed to frequent street protests. But I have never seen anything quite like the anger that has been building up during demonstrations over the past few months against the government of Nicolas Sarkozy. The most recent of these was a protest I attended in Montparnasse on 14 May, which was led by hospital staff angry at proposed health service reforms.

Andrew Hussey writes in the New Statesman and worries that a repeat of May 1968 may be on the way.

2009 may also have its own version of Danny the Red

Olivier Besancenot, a 35-year-old postman from the outskirts of Paris. Besancenot’s boyish good looks, fashionable clothes and fluently easy manner on television have made him the nation’s favourite revolutionary. Until February of this year, he was a leading figure in the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (the LCR, or Revolutionary Communist League). In what is now looking like a very smart piece of PR, the LCR was then dissolved, re-emerging as the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA, or New Anti-Capitalist Party), a much broader coalition, formed with the aim of contesting the European parliamentary elections in early June.