Coronavirus is pushing Macron’s government to breaking point

Last week, the French were amused at Anglo-Saxon hoarding of toilet paper, known vulgarly here as ‘PQ’ — papier cul. Now France itself has tested positive for panic. Supermarkets across the country have been under siege, shelves stripped bare of loo roll and much else. The government has already requisitioned all supplies of face masks and slapped price controls on hand sanitiser — with foreseeable results. Sanitiser is now scarcer than PQ and not even hospitals have enough face masks.

When President Emmanuel Macron first went on television to reassure the French, his typically prolix message served to fertilise general nervousness. He returned to the nation’s screens on Monday night to declare France to be ‘at war’ with an invisible enemy. The strategy he had announced a few days earlier was abandoned. Restaurants and bars are to close and a 15-day lockdown was imposed, with €135 fines for violations and 100,000 police to enforce the rules — plus the army too, where necessary.