Emmanuel macron

At last, a people’s revolt against the tyranny of environmentalism. Paris is burning. Not since 1968 has there been such heat and fury in the streetsThousands of ‘gilets jaunes’ stormed the capital at the weekend to rage against Emmanuel Macron and his treatment of them with aloof, technocratic disdain. And yet leftists in Britain and the US have been largely silent, or at least antsy, about this people’s revolt. The same people who got so excited about the staid, static Occupy movement a few years ago — which couldn’t even been arsed to march, never mind riot — seem struck dumb by the sight of tens of thousands of French people taking

Is Emmanuel Macron the oddest leader in the EU? When he became President of France last year, he made a speech at Versailles to both houses of parliament calling for a renewal of ‘the spirit of conquest’. This year, commemorating the centenary of the Armistice, he seemed more inclined to invent a project for perpetual peace, like some 18th-century rationalist. In recent days, he has demanded our fish, decided that the gilets jaunes, who are rioting about his astonishing diesel price rises to save the planet, are really a ‘brown plague’, and welcomed a report which wishes to empty France’s museums of any treasures which originated in Africa, Oceania and anywhere

France has been in a state of organised uprising this week, with 300,000 motorists taking to the streets and autoroutes to protest against rising fuel taxes. One protester has died, more than 400 have been injured and even more disruption is on the way. Watching Emmanuel Macron, you wouldn’t know it. He travelled to Berlin to commemorate Germany’s war dead, launching for the second time in a fortnight into his proposal for a single European army, and saying it was Europe’s duty to prevent the world ‘slipping into global chaos’ — apparently unable to recognise the chaotic scenes he had left behind. It is not out of character for France’s

The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled old French infantryman chiselled on top. His big capable hands are gripping the block’s edge, as though he is peering intently over the parapet of a trench. On Sunday we assembled around him to honour the 53 local men, from a population of 1,800, who lost their lives in the first world war. Schoolchildren queued at a microphone to sing out their names. A ladies choir sang a plangent song about Verdun. The state bell tolled for 11 minutes. The major made an interminable speech in the rain. Everybody sang

On Sunday, I reached the summit of the col de Riou in the Pyrénées to find a shepherd tending his flock. He asked if I’d seen a bear on my way up through the forest. One of his sheep was missing and he suspected a bear was responsible. I’d seen no sign of one but that got us talking, and I asked what he thought about the government repopulating the Pyrénées with bears. He shrugged and said the time for protesting was past. The bears are here to stay and that was that. One could say the same about Salafists, I reflected that evening, as I read Le Journal du Dimanche.

It says much about Europe’s political establishment that Marine Le Pen has been charged over photographs she tweeted in 2015 to illustrate the barbarity of Isis. It was a stupid stunt of Le Pen’s, but not one worthy of prosecution and the political martyrdom that will ensue if she is convicted. Le Pen is facing the possibility of three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£66,000) because last year the European Parliament voted to strip her of immunity, thereby allowing a French judge to charge her with distributing “violent messages that incite terrorism or…seriously harm human dignity”. Meanwhile, as politicians and lawmakers conspire to send Le Pen down for

Obviously, one mocks little President Macron for telling a teenager to call him ‘Monsieur le President’. How long before the French will have to say ‘Vive l’Empereur!’? But I do have a sneaking sympathy for the man one must not call ‘Manu’. The presumption of modern culture that everyone is on first-name terms makes people confused because they come to believe they really are friends with ‘Harry and Meghan’, or whoever it may be. The famous people thus addressed are also unhappy, because they cannot remember who they do and don’t know, and because they feel that people are trying to own them. Full, formal modes of address provide a