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It began as a protest against the raised petrol tax and has evolved into a kind of rural citizen movement. The yellow vests own the space in the French public and have the full attention of the media and the regime right now.

The starting shot came last Saturday with a nationwide blockade of the French roads. Over 300,000 people in bright yellow reflective vest put their cars across and went out into the streets to manifest their dissatisfaction, not to say desperation, over the state of affairs.

What then are the yellow vest?

It is not easy to find out because the movement is a citizens' initiative without formal leaders. Spokesmen describe it as a popular uprising from French countryside and small towns, where they are tired of being given priority. In places where the industries are closed down and the social functions move to the nearest big city. Where petrol prices are raised at the same time as the jobs disappear.

The basis of the motley initiative is workers and lower middle class, groups that state that there is far too much month left at the end of the salary. The Cape is directed at the rulers in Paris and more specifically at President Emmanuel Macron. His two greatest political antagonists, the extreme right-wing Marine Le Pen, and the left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon have both expressed sympathy with the movement. But the battle for their favor seems to interest the yellow west moderately. Several of the foreground figures have been contacted by local mayors who want to ride the protest wave. So far no lock call has worked.

The first week's demonstrations have also involved violent clashes. A couple of deaths have been reported and nearly one hundred police officers have been injured. Several incidents of racist and homophobic character, where a black woman and a homosexual couples have become the object of the protesters' anger, have also taken place, something that the movement's spokesmen have denied.

French sociologists and political experts have recently laid their foreheads in deep folds to decipher the movement and place the yellow vestments on the political scale. Is it the beginning of a right-wing extreme citizen? Is it up to the struggle against the torment in the French countryside? Where is the (usually ubiquitous) trade union movement in that case?

No one seems to know. The only yellow vest has in common with other French dissatisfaction groups is that they take to the street to show what they think.

The trigger factor for the anger that has just been spilling around the country is the increased petrol and diesel tax, which is a step in the government's ambition to phase out environmentally hazardous vehicles.

Here Emmanuel Macron has an educational problem that he will soon share with many leaders in the West.

Considering climate anxiety as a kind of middle-class affair is a populist strategy that wins ground also in Sweden. It is easy to dismiss with cold facts: On the day that climate change is out of control, they will probably hit hardest against the poor also in the western world.

But the future is one thing, everyday hardships another. As you know, the food must be on the table before you can take on morality, if it is literally about the survival of the family. Here the entire Western world leaders are faced with a series of difficult economic policy issues of justice: Is it reasonable to force the French countryside to make short-term sacrifices for long-term ecological sustainability, while the urban middle class goes on weekend trips as if no tomorrow existed?

How does one explain to the European working class that they must contribute to the next generation's well-being when they cannot afford to take the car to work?

Tomorrow, new massive blockades of French roads have been announced.

Nothing suggests that anger is diminishing. No answers seem to exist in the Elysee Palace.