Finger-Wagging Won’t Win Over Gen Z

François Bayrou had nothing left to lose. Days before the French National Assembly was set to pass a motion of no confidence in his government, the 74-year-old prime minister went on national television to pin the blame for France’s slew of seemingly intractable political and financial crises on an unlikely target: his own generation. Lamenting the Assembly’s moves to oust him after he unveiled a proposal to cut public spending and freeze annual pension increases to rein in his nation’s sprawling budget deficit, Bayrou argued that France’s political class was sacrificing the futures of young people “for the comfort of certain political parties and for the comfort of the boomers … who from [their] point of view consider that everything is fine.”