Liberté, egalité, supériorité

The French election, of unprecedented interest, hazard and potential for violence, has been largely about who is to blame. Blame for what, exactly? For the country’s chronic malaise. But is it the fault of the bankers, the bosses, the bureaucracy, or the immigrants?

Quite often the British press gives the impression that France is in some kind of deplorable condition that we must at all costs avoid, a hybrid, perhaps, of economic Guinea-Bissau and ideological North Korea. In part, this is because the French themselves so strongly lament the state of their country; I have a whole shelf of books (by no means exhaustive) in which French authors predict its imminent collapse.

Like any nation at any time in history, France has its problems. Its frightful battery farms of resentment, trafficking and delinquency are, in atmosphere if not physically, worse than anything in England; its vaunted educational system has deteriorated thanks to the belated adoption of gimcrack theories.