France is at war again, or as good as, according to Emmanuel Manuel’s recent rhetoric. This time the enemy is Russia, which at least is a more tangible adversary than Covid, on which the French president declared ‘war’ in March 2020. Most of the Republic believed him and submitted to one of the most draconian lockdowns in Europe. The state of health emergency imposed by Macron ended only at the start of last month, by which time millions of French understood that it had been a phoney war on a virus that wasn’t half as deadly as their president had had them believe.
Barely a fortnight after the health emergency was lifted, Macron was once more issuing a warning of doom and gloom, this one about the ‘price’ the French must pay for supporting Ukraine. It is now a narrative parroted regularly by his ministers.
At the weekend Gabriel Attal, the Minister for Public Action & Accounts, told the nation ‘to prepare for tension’ as a result of rising food and energy prices.
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