France is divided over who to blame for weekend riots– www.bbc.co.uk

In Saint-Denis suburb on Monday, I met Lisa Cordat, of the FSE student union. She told me that students organised themselves for demos via social media messaging or through student-led organisations. She said it was “insulting” to suggest they were being manipulated or “told to do this, or do that” by politicians.

“Student anger comes from the ground up,” says Lisa.

But there is also a palpable frustration amongst many in France at what they see as the politicisation of Saturday’s violence. Lina, who is 25, told me: “Politicians are hunting for scapegoats but don’t ask why it all happened. The root causes of Saturday. We feel scared and abandoned.”

France’s leading politicians have indulged in a festival of finger-pointing since Saturday.

The presidential election here in six months’ time is hotly contested and the volatility on French streets funneled immediately into France’s already febrile politics.

Mélenchon, currently running in second place in most polls, ahead of centrist candidates, accused France’s centrist Prime Minister of being “responsible for the chaos” either due to “incompetence or a worst-case strategy.”

Mélonchon went on to apparently imply Mr Lecornu may have allowed the violence to unfold, so as to position itself as a “party of order”, after Saturday’s lawlessness, “that would make people forget his failure in public finances.”

France is struggling with spiralling public debt and government borrowing costs.