and he has been forced to jettison unpopular new taxes in the wake of a spontaneous uprising that started in the countryside.

The demonstrations continue every Saturday, accompanied by brutal clashes between police and demonstrators, and ever-louder cries of "Macron resignation" and even "revolution."

Macron has partially succeeded in clawing back the initiative, and a bit more popularity, with an exhausting series of meetings with mayors and local officials in what he calls "a national debate." For the populist Italian vice-premier, Luigi Di Maio, to come to France to meet gilets jaunes leaders on Feb. 6 was seen by the French government as a form of political sedition aimed directly at undermining Macron's precarious position.

"Di Maio didn't come to see just anyone in France," a senior French official told AFP."He met Christophe Chalençon, an insurgent who is calling for civil war."

Thus the recalling of the French ambassador, a diplomatic move without precedent since 1940 when fascist Italy entered the Second World War against France.

The message was: This is no longer business as usual.

Di Maio may, in fact, be perversely pleased by this crisis.

He is a key figure in an unstable two-headed government. He leads the Five Star Movement, one of two extreme populist parties that came together in coalition after toppling the established political order in national elections last year.

The other party in government is La Lega — the League — and its leader, Matteo Salvini, is now Italy's interior minister and a loud and controversial voice against refugees and almost all forms of immigration. He has