Why can’t French progressives be more civil?

There was a muted reaction among the French political class to the attempt on Donald’s Trump’s life. Keir Starmer sent his best wishes to the former president in the early hours of Sunday morning, but it was another six hours before president Emmanuel Macron followed suit. The caretaker prime minister of France, Gabriel Attal, made no comment, nor did the man who dreams of having his job, Olivier Faure, the secretary of the Socialist party.

One or two figures from the left-wing coalition did offer their lukewarm support to Trump. Sandrine Rousseau, for example, a Green MP, wished him a ‘speedy recovery’ and condemned ‘all violence under any circumstances whatsoever’. Clémence Guetté, a member of La France Insoumise (LFI), said that ‘violence has no place in the world of politics’, but also stated her belief ‘in conflict in politics as a way of expressing a form of anger’.