Professor John Keiger is the former research director of the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge. He is the author of France and the Origins of the First World War.
France is the most rigorously secular state of the democratic world. Separation of Church and State enshrined in the famous 1905 law was the result of over a century of hostility between the Catholic Church and the French State. Mutual hostility began with the 1789 French Revolution. Until then monarchical France bathed in the glory
The suspected terrorist attack in Nice’s Notre Dame Basilica this morning appears to be the third such incident in France in the last few weeks. Two female worshippers and a man thought to be the Basilica’s sexton had their throats slit by an assassin who, it is claimed, cried ‘Allahu Akbar’ after being shot and wounded by
In the course of his three-and-a-half year presidency, Emmanuel Macron must have the record for the most number of international states antagonised in the shortest time. From eastern Europe to the United States via Brexit he has the knack of putting states’ backs up by a mixture of outdated Gaullian pomposity, lesson-giving and base tactlessness.
Last Saturday the French president and British Prime Minister had a phone conversation about the pandemic and Brexit that received little coverage. But the subject matter highlights the extent to which the two leaders have troubles in common and solutions to share. Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson have had a bad pandemic for similar reasons: lack
The EU has never been a serious global foreign policy player. Without a European army or a meaningful defence pact, the pretence of a Common Foreign and Security Policy is mere sound and fury signifying nothing. Back in 1991, the Gulf War served as a stocktake of the international weakness of the European communities with
That the European Union takes to the moral high ground on international law when it suits it is hardly new. Nor is its infringement of international treaties, even when they are its own. For six months now, the European Union has been in breach of its fundamental international treaty: the 2007 Lisbon Treaty. Brussels has
It’s that old Covid chauvinism again. France is in denial about the severity of its new pandemic flare up and possibly a second wave. French news bulletins, but also supposedly authoritative newspapers like Le Monde, have concentrated on how badly things are going elsewhere. In the last few days, Spain was singled out as having
At a solemn ceremony at the Panthéon to mark the 150th anniversary of the (re-)birth of the Republic, president Macron chose a 59-year-old anti-Brexit British expatriate to be one of five newly naturalised French citizens emblematic of what it means to become French. Macron does nothing without gauging its historical and political theatre. Coming just days
This week France announced a €100 billion (£89 billion) stimulus package equivalent to 4 per cent of GDP over two years. It might seem churlish to ask why the French government has put so much money on the table. To save the French economy, of course. But there’s a graver concern in France that has lately
From 1940 to 1944, the Vichy regime set aside France’s 150-year-old rousing national anthem La Marseillaise for Maréchal nous voilà, a sycophantic hymn to France’s collaborationist leader Marshal Pétain. Pétain in the southern zone and the occupying German forces in the north brutally punished any singing of La Marseillaise. During the Second World War, Land of
The French gently mocked the pop-singer Petula Clarke on French media in the 1970s for her contortions about her heart being English but her soul French, or was it the reverse? But however much the British metropolitan classes may cloy to France as a mythical ‘world they have lost’, the French perceive the Franco-British relationship
Are we increasingly living under a ‘doctatorship’? The influence of the medical profession over our everyday lives – from personal freedom, to how our children are schooled, to the economy – has soared since the pandemic. But is this a good thing? Or are democratically elected governments in danger of allowing medics to have undue
President Macron neither lacks chutzpah nor a lust for drama. His walkabout yesterday amid the devastation of Lebanon’s Beirut, following the massive chemical explosion that killed over 150, wounded 5000 and razed a whole section of the city, evoked David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia with Macron as the strutting Peter O’Toole denouncing the factionalism that
Is Covid accelerating the eclipse of France and the UK as ‘great powers’? For over two centuries Paris and London have been seated at the top table in world affairs. The essential element of their power has been economic, allowing both states to maintain powerful defence budgets, pursue active foreign policies and in the last
The controversy over the UK’s use of Huawei equipment in its 5G network has not abated, despite the government’s announcement that the Chinese manufacturer’s equipment will be stripped from the network by 2027. Conservative MPs continue to be unsatisfied by this half-way house, claiming that Britain will remain vulnerable to ‘back-door’ espionage by the Chinese
On Wednesday, the new French Prime Minister Jean Castex made his general policy statement to the National Assembly. We know things are getting serious in France because the new Prime Minister was wearing a proper suit: charcoal-grey, well-cut, elegant. No more of the boyband blue drainpipe little numbers sported by his predecessor, tailored to Macron’s
Picture the greatest French criminal barrister of his generation with the physique and cantankerousness of Rumpole-of-the-Bailey and the media-strutting ‘blokishness’ of Nigel Farage. Just imagine this 59-year-old son of an Italian cleaning-lady, great orator, defender of all-comers – including in his own words ‘the gypsy who has just disembowelled an old lady to steal her
His name is unknown, but resonates like that of a character from Astérix the Gaul. Jean Castex is France’s new prime minister, with a government reshuffle to follow. In ridding himself of the stolid and popular Edouard Philippe, Emmanuel Macron is playing his last hand in the presidential poker game to reset his troubled presidency.
The clock is ticking for Emmanuel Macron. He has under two years of his presidential mandate to carry out his programme, much of which has been in suspended animation since before even Covid. In reality, it is much less than two years if one subtracts campaigning for the presidentials in May-June 2022, or even the
Emmanuel Macron never misses an historical opportunity to emblazon his banner. One is reminded of the nineteenth century diplomat Talleyrand whose ulterior motives were so notorious that on learning of the Frenchman’s death the Austrian statesman Metternich enquired nervously ‘What did he mean by that?’ Tomorrow, president Macron will be in London – exempted of
