France

Friday

Alice Pfeiffer

L’abstention: the third option for France

This weekend, France will again go to the polls in the final round of voting. The choice is between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. And while the polls look very much in Macron’s favour, many fear that Le Pen could still be in with a chance. Not so much because of the votes she will receive, but rather because of the votes Macron may not.   65 percent of disappointed Mélenchon voters are claiming they will abstain, according to a recent survey. This reflects a rising trend in France, called ‘l’abstention’ – the refusal to vote. For many French voters, both options they are presented with are equally unacceptable: having to choose between

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 4 May 2017

‘Emmanuel Macron est le plus grand con du monde,’ said the elderly gent taking the vacant seat on my right at the Marine Le Pen rally last week. He had slicked-back white hair, a little hog’s-bristle moustache and broken-down white trainers. Plus grand means ‘biggest’, du monde means ‘in the world’, and con means, well, have a guess. A teenage girl and her pal squeezed past to occupy the spare pair of seats on my left. They flung themselves joyfully into the chanting and singing before they’d even sat down. The Palais Nikaia, a concert venue next to Nice airport, holds 8,000 people. Ten minutes before Marine Le Pen was

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Emmanuel Macron is the perfect product of Parisian groupthink

As the polls reopen this weekend for the coronation of Emmanuel Macron, the political establishment will congratulate themselves for having once again imposed their Parisian groupthink on the entire country. Without getting too bogged down in the election, which Marine Le Pen will certainly lose, the question poses itself: how does this imposition of ideology work? To see how, and as a small distraction from the great events sweeping the national stage, may I invite you to my own corner of southern France? Specifically, to the city of Béziers, whose 75,000 inhabitants face monumental challenges in the struggle to adapt to globalisation and to escape years of decay presided over

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Slick Macron triumphs over Le Pen in France’s feisty TV debate

There were times during last night’s televised debate between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron when it resembled more a playground slanging match than a pitch to become president of France. The National Front leader and her En Marche! counterpart traded insults, exchanged stares and did their best to shout each other down during two-and-a-half hours of enthralling but unedifying television. A snap poll taken by French broadcaster BFMTV shortly after the dust settled on the extraordinary encounter showed that 63 per cent of people believed Macron had come out on top, while an online poll in Le Parisien newspaper also has the centrist candidate as the clear winner. There had been

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Masonic bodge

Left-wing groupie Paul Mason has written a costume drama about the suppression of the Paris commune in 1871. We meet Louise Michel and her all-female gang of arsonists as they’re carted off to jail for setting fire to the Tuileries. After a harsh stint in the cells, they’re shipped out to the French colony of New Caledonia, in the eastern Pacific, where they live in an open prison. Things aren’t too bad. They mingle with the natives, enjoy the local hooch, and sing comradely songs about ‘spilling the blood impure’. Escape is on the agenda. A committee of anarchists is said to be making swift progress across the ocean in

Theodore Dalrymple

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

Douglas Murray

Is Le Pen really ‘far-right’?

What is ‘far-right’? With the progress of Marine Le Pen to France’s presidential run-off, the term has been liberally used — as it has been over recent years across the West. Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, and the Sweden Democrats are all said to be far-right, to name but three. The fact that the first two of those groups engage in intimidation, racism and overt displays of political violence would ordinarily distinguish them from a peaceful democratic party opposed to mass immigration like the Sweden Democrats. Yet everywhere there is the same name creep. The website Breitbart is frequently called far-right, as is the administration of Donald Trump.

Ariane Bankes

A husband to die for

What will we do when there are no longer caches of letters to piece together and decipher; only vague memories of myriad emails? We will be like butterfly hunters flailing around with our nets, hoping to catch some rare specimen with glittering wings among the detritus of daily exchanges. The letters of Ida Nettleship, first wife of the arch-bohemian Augustus John, are a case in point: gathered together here from diverse sources by her granddaughter Rebecca John and expertly introduced by John’s biographer Michael Holroyd, they constitute a rare epistolary treasure trove. Spanning some 15 years, from Ida’s late teens to her early death from puerperal fever at 30, following

Wednesday

David Patrikarakos

Could the French far left propel Marine Le Pen to victory?

The French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye’s career has encompassed everything from fiction to prose poetry, but he will best be remembered for his contribution to political science: Horseshoe Theory. This maxim holds that the far left and far right, rather than being at opposite ends of a linear political spectrum, in fact closely resemble each other. This is because the political spectrum is not linear but instead curves like a horseshoe, the right and left extremes of which almost meet. Faye’s theory has often been derided for being simplistic, so he could be forgiven for feeling a quiet sense of vindication after a recent survey of supporters of the defeated far

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s burkini row returns

Bad weather swept across southern France over the May Day holiday but summer is just around the corner and with it will come the burkini. Last week, a call was issued to burkini-wearers to gather at the Cannes film festival later this month, with the organiser saying it will be the perfect moment ‘to celebrate together this freedom in the town that was the first to ban the burkini’. The burkini brouhaha of last August made headlines around the world but it soon blew over like a summer storm. A handful of beaches on the Cote d’Azur banned young women from wearing the Islamic swimsuit, citing concerns over public disorder,

Sunday

Charles Moore

Does Emmanuel Macron represent the ‘Uber-isation’ of politics?

A French friend tells me that Emmanuel Macron represents the ‘Uber-isation’ of politics. I suppose that makes Le Pen the spokesman for the black cab interest. I want to live in a country which manages a modus vivendi between these two schools of thought. If life is all Uber, it will be freer and cheaper, but also more ignorant and grotty. If life is all black cabs, prices will be too high and cabbies will revert to the surlier service they used to give in the 20th century. Perhaps such peaceful coexistence is an impossible dream. This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes, which appears in this week’s Spectator

Jonathan Fenby

Emmanuel Macron is marching towards disaster

Coming out of a celebratory dinner at a Montparnasse brasserie after topping the poll in the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron had a brief brush with the press. A reporter asked: ‘Is this your Fouquet moment? This referred to a notoriously showy celebration by Nicolas Sarkozy at Fouquet’s restaurant after his own victory in 2007. The 39-year-old centrist was visibly cross. He simply wanted to thank his secretaries, security officers, politicians and writers, he said. Then came the dig. ‘If you don’t understand that,’ he said, ‘you understand nothing about life. I have no lessons to learn from the petit milieu Parisien.’ This dismissive

Thursday

Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Europe’s new emperor

On this week’s episode of The Spectator Podcast, we discuss whether France is voting for the lesser of two evils in Emmanuel Macron, consider whether Tim Farron made a mistake by bringing God into politics, and look at how the spread of Mayism across Britain could alter the Conservative party. First, following Emmanuel Macron’s stunning victory in the first round of the French elections – taking a seemingly unassailable popularity into the run-off with Marine Le Pen – Jonathan Fenby considers, in this week’s magazine cover story, whether Macron is in fact headed for disaster. He joins the podcast along with Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, to discuss whether the 39-year-old sensation is all he seems.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron is wrong to think his election victory is a foregone conclusion

France is in a flap and Emmanuel Macron is to blame. On Sunday evening the En Marche! leader looked for all the world like a man who believed he’d already been crowned king. Bounding onto stage with a wink, a wave and a smile to his adoring supporters, after his first round victory, he then partied the night away at a Parisian bistro surrounded by the great and the good of France’s liberal elite. Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, after a brief speech to her supporters in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, left to start plotting her second round campaign. On Monday evening she appeared on the main news programme to announce

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

A little too perfect

Emmanuel Macron is going to be the next president of France. I know people are saying Marine Le Pen isn’t out of the race and it’s important to keep the suspense going as long as possible. But I see no scenario in which the French will vote her into the Elsyée.  Le Pen’s attempt to distance herself from the toxic National Front founded by her father, declaring herself an independent, just like Macron, is entertaining. But it will change nothing. The French may claim to be revolutionaries but they are terrified of change and Marine scares them. Avec raison.  So the serious questions are, who is Emmanuel Macron, the future

Jonathan Fenby

What’s the matter with Macron?

Coming out of a celebratory dinner at a Montparnasse brasserie after topping the poll in the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron had a brief brush with the press. A reporter asked: ‘Is this your Fouquet moment? This referred to a notoriously showy celebration by Nicolas Sarkozy at Fouquet’s restaurant after his own victory in 2007. The 39-year-old centrist was visibly cross. He simply wanted to thank his secretaries, security officers, politicians and writers, he said. Then came the dig. ‘If you don’t understand that,’ he said, ‘you understand nothing about life. I have no lessons to learn from the petit milieu Parisien.’ This dismissive

Tuesday

Robert Tombs

France wants a new saviour. Will it be Macron or Le Pen?

After having given themselves and the rest of us a fright, France’s voters have, by a worryingly small margin, stepped back from the brink. Some polls indicated a possible victory for the two extremists, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, either of whom would have meant disaster for France. Instead, the next President will almost certainly be the youthful centrist, Emmanuel Macron, the nearest to a viable establishment candidate. Though this is certainly a far lesser evil, it is evident that the political system of Europe’s oldest large democracy has gone spectacularly wrong. The minimum requirement of a functioning democracy is that a manageable range of sensible choices is put

Monday

Aline-Florence Manent

Is Emmanuel Macron doomed to be a lame duck President from the start?

Emmanuel Macron is on the verge of becoming the youngest president in French history. If he is successful in defeating his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, it will also be the first time since 1974 that France elects a centrist president. But even in its early days, Macron’s presidency will face a huge test: his En Marche! movement is still very much in its infancy and it is unclear whether it will morph into a full-blown political party before June’s legislative elections. If it doesn’t, one of the main questions that voters will have is whether Macron will be able to govern in the absence of a clear parliamentary majority. Since the term of the presidency

Mathieu Vaillancourt

Meet France’s answer to Nigel Farage

The success of Emmanuel Macron’s ‘En Marche’, a party which is barely a year old, has taken some by surprise. But Macron wasn’t the only alternative party candidate to do well in the first round of voting in the French Presidential elections. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, or NDA as the French call him, is the leader of Debout La France – probably the closest thing in French politics to Ukip. The mayor of Yeres, a commune which sits in the suburbs of Paris, is firmly eurosceptic and anti-euro. For some, he is France’s answer to Nigel Farage. And yesterday, he picked up 4.7 per cent of the vote – compared to 1.8 per cent in 2012. His

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

An unlikely alliance of Communists and Catholics could yet spoil Macron’s coronation

After their humiliation with Brexit and Donald Trump, the pollsters returned to form in France with their predictions of a Macron and Le Pen first round victory. If the polls are as accurate with their forecast for the second round, then the new president of France will be the centrist Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old is the overwhelming favourite. But nonetheless, there are reasons for the National Front to hope that they could still replicate the political earthquakes of 2016. For that to happen Marine Le Pen will have to attack Macron on two fronts with the purpose of attracting votes from both the far-left and the conservative right. Between them,