John Keiger is a former Research Director at the University of Cambridge and author of the biography of French president Raymond Poincaré
What is Emmanuel Macron playing at? In the space of just a few days, three apparently unconnected incidents have the French president’s fingerprints all over them. They indicate that, while Macron is a spent force at home, he is willing to deploy his powers to help France navigate the Iran war crisis and try to
“Not perfect,” was Donald Trump’s reply when asked about Emmanuel Macron’s support for the Iran operation. “But it’s France, we don’t expect perfect.” The French President had initially distanced his country from the bombing campaign for, in his view, noncompliance with international law. Then Iran struck allied Gulf states and Cyprus. Macron immediately dispatched France’s
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The 11,000 wind turbines in the UK are not only an eyesore, they are also a killer. Their blades can spin deceptively fast at up to 186 miles per hour. Even if most are bridled at 56 miles per hour for structural reasons, they still manage to kill creatures which fly into their paths. Birds of prey
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From the stability of the Fifth Republic’s institutions, France is regressing to the chronic instability of bygone republics. In eight years as president, Emmanuel Macron has expended eight prime ministers. For the moment, one per year compares favourably with the Third and Fourth Republics, whose governments averaged nine and six months respectively. But the pace
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First: a look ahead to President Trump’s state visit next week Transatlantic tensions are growing as the row over Peter Mandelson’s role provides an ominous overture to Donald Trump’s state visit next week. Political editor Tim Shipman has the inside scoop on how No. 10 is preparing. Keir Starmer’s aides are braced for turbulence. ‘The
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Financial crises are often linked to a political crisis. On 8 September, the French government will submit itself to a vote of confidence – which, by all accounts, it will lose. At issue is France’s parlous financial state, which a minority French government seeks to address. This week, French 30-year bond yields reached levels unseen
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‘Small boats’ are the big talking point from this week’s Franco-British summit. The consensus is that there are slim pickings for Britain, and the reason why is simple: France negotiates according to its interests, Britain negotiates according to the Chagos template. France’s president Emmanuel Macron had little incentive to agree anything but a symbolic ‘returns’
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The great ‘EU Reset’ of 19 May – when the first formal UK-EU summit since Brexit will take place – is rapidly approaching. Yet even before Keir Starmer and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen meet in London to thrash out an agreement, advance attempts to sell the new relationship are growing. That so much
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Sir Keir Starmer will sign a new strategic partnership with Brussels at a summit on 19 May. The draft preamble apparently states that the UK and the EU are committed to similar ‘geopolitical values’. This is all part of Labour’s ‘reset’ with Europe intended to return Britain to the EU’s orbit in everything from phytosanitary
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Donald Trump’s recent decision to deny Ukraine access to American intelligence data in the war against Russia has concentrated minds on how the US could restrict Britain’s defence capability, from F-35 stealth jets to its independent nuclear deterrent. Some fears are well-founded. Others, such as the recent suggestion by a former French ambassador to the
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Emmanuel Macron’s lightning visit to the White House was a tour de force of French diplomatic energy, skill and bravado. Whether Macron has managed to convince Donald Trump of the need to involve Kyiv and Europe in US-Russian negotiations on the war in Ukraine will become clear in the next fortnight. But what it demonstrated forcefully was
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When David Frost led UK negotiations with the EU on a free trade agreement five years ago, he was supported by a 100-strong Cabinet Office team. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘EU reset unit’, also based in the Cabinet Office, is 100-strong too, including two permanent secretaries. Given Labour’s insistence that it is not seeking to
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Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died aged 96 on 7 January, was the personification of the travails and excesses of post-war France. He was a co-founder in 1972 of the reactionary Front National, whose senior members included former Vichy collaborators and a former member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne Division. Yet on 21 April 2002 to
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Yesterday morning, the British Prime Minister travelled to Paris at the invitation of the French President to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. Sir Keir Starmer was the first UK leader to attend an Armistice Day ceremony in Paris since Winston Churchill did so alongside General
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Wars begin and end in controversy. The war that ended 106 years ago today with the armistice of 11 November 1918 carried the germ of controversy before it even broke out. Prior to Britain declaring war on the German Empire on 4 August the Germans rushed into print their ‘White Book’ of diplomatic documents on the
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It is our duty on Remembrance Sunday to honour the fallen. But to do justice to their sacrifice, we should also remember why the world descended into war in 1914. The history of the Great War has captivated and divided historians since Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired that fateful shot at Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand
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France’s 73-year-old prime minister, Michel Barnier, underwent surgery last weekend for a lesion on his upper neck. According to the government spokeswoman yesterday, the operation ‘went well’ and the PM is back at work after two to three days’ rest. French media have been characteristically tight-lipped about the health of France’s second in command and
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France has been without an official government for seven weeks, the longest in the history of the Fifth Republic. A caretaker prime minister and government have been running the country for what President Macron declared the ‘Olympic truce’. That truce is now over, yet the President is in no hurry to appoint a new prime
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In the last years of Louis XVI’s reign, French finances were in a parlous state. State debt had ballooned, its servicing became exorbitant, and France’s creditworthiness sunk. The need to raise taxes after years of profligacy forced the monarch to summon the Estates General – the first time since 1614 – to obtain their approval.
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Writing of the state of France in the twilight of the fateful Second Empire, the left-wing journalist Henri Rochefort observed: ‘France contains 36 million subjects, not including the subjects of discontent.’ Has anything changed since 1868? From the European to the legislative elections, France is a profoundly divided nation. At present and probably until mid-August, she
