John Keiger is a former Research Director at the University of Cambridge and author of the biography of French president Raymond Poincaré
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Is France flirting with the idea of Frexit again? Coronavirus is currently provoking a chorus of ‘reprendre le contrôle’ (take back control) across the political spectrum. The epidemic is laying bare France’s dependence on outside states for essentials such as masks, medicines, test kits and ventilators. Even arch-Europhile Emmanuel Macron visiting a French mask manufacturer
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On Saturday night France’s Prime Minister spoke to the French people flanked by the Health Minister, the Director General of Health (DGS) and three epidemiologists, to reassure the public that the government would be more transparent about the spread of coronavirus. Despite President Macron’s increasing media appearances in the ‘war on corona’ a 25 March
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It is said that the first casualty of war is truth. In the purported war on coronavirus, Rod Liddle rightly asks ‘how reliable are the coronavirus figures?’ and comes to the conclusion the answer is ‘not very’. He is right, for at least two important reasons. Firstly, not all states are carrying out the same number
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In his broadcast to the nation ten days ago, president Macron tub-thumped his war campaign on coronavirus. Six times he repeated the word ‘war’. Yesterday, he visited the front: Mulhouse in Alsace, on the Franco-German border, where France’s largest virus cluster is overwhelming the region’s hospitals. Live TV saw him, masked up, in an army field
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In France there is a palpable sense of administrative and political panic in how to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. As I write from Perpignan on the French-Spanish border on the morning of 24 March, France has 19,856 coronavirus cases and 860 deaths; Britain 6,650 and 335. After Italy and Spain, France is the third worst affected
A cuisine in crisis
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The European project was built on the idea of rendering future war among European states impossible. The EU is programmed to avoid armed conflict among its member states, a situation that would blatantly undermine its very essence. But who could have predicted that an epidemic would shake its foundations. In the space of a couple
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‘At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they’re returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth – in other words to silence.’ Albert Camus, The
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The glaring difference between the EU and British negotiating goals has been brought into plain sight. In readiness for the upcoming Barnier-Frost negotiations, the French senate produced for the French government a set of requirements that Michel Barnier should work to in the negotiations. Those recommendations, which it published on 6 March, are extremely hardline.
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Looming behind the Frost-Barnier negotiations is a battle between London and Paris as financial centres. After the June 2016 referendum, the French failed miserably to seduce City institutions away from the UK. There was no exodus from London, and of those few relocations to the continent, most avoided Paris, preferring to scatter widely from Dublin
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‘I’d rather have lucky generals than good ones’, Napoleon – or Eisenhower – was supposed to have said, ‘they win battles’. Emmanuel Macron is a good general, but not a lucky one. Since he stood for the presidential election in May 2017, he has demonstrated strategic ability in identifying the reforms France needs to modernise its
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What would Disraeli make of Brexit? His advice to ‘read no history; nothing but biography, for that is life without theory’ is a useful starting point. Brexit has been – and continues to be – a hotch-potch of biographies where human weaknesses, strengths and foibles chafe and collide. The upcoming clash between the EU’s chief
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In the excitement/misery of leaving the EU at the end of January many overlooked a touching note written by President Emmanuel Macron to the British people. It was a ‘love letter’ of sorts, a mixture of déclaration d’amour and regretful confession, which bore all the hallmarks of a note from the jilted to the jilter,
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Since Boris gained his 80-strong majority in the Commons, a chasm has opened up between what the French reckoned they would be able to extract from Britain in the post-Brexit EU negotiations and what Emmanuel Macron will now prioritise. A number of other events have also chastened the French (and Brussels) beyond the election result,
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Winston Churchill’s comment about France has lost none of its piquancy. Churchill famously said of the difference between Britain, France and Germany: ‘In England, everything is permitted except what is forbidden. In Germany, everything is forbidden except what is permitted. In France, everything is allowed, even what is prohibited.’ France’s debilitating national transport strike, now
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Emmanuel Macron’s 2020 ‘to do’ list is nothing if not challenging. Starting with the domestic it offers no respite in its international agenda. Nation-wide transport strikes opposed to the President’s root and branch pension reform have been paralysing France for 23 days, now longer than the legendary 1995 strike that forced President Chirac to withdraw
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Boris Johnson’s big election win means the Tories have taken back control of Parliament. The PM’s majority ensures that he can deliver on Brexit and also push through his party’s agenda for government. One of the more eye-catching policies planned is a shake-up of Whitehall and the British civil service. Without a radical change, policy implementation
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What will happen if Jeremy Corbyn wins? Will it be a nightmare on Downing Street, as Liam Halligan suggests in this week’s Spectator? Or might Corbyn not be as bad as his critics fear? Helpfully, France provides a useful parallel of what prime minister Jeremy Corbyn might mean for Britain. And it doesn’t make happy
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If Boris Johnson wins a clear majority on 12 December, it could mark a big turning point in British history. The brakes will be off for the United Kingdom to formally leave the European Union by 31 January 2020. Then the new Tory government will decide how radical its future relationship with the European Union
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This week is seminal for Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron. Boris, in Watford, is hosting one of the most important Nato summits for years. Its significance is not because it marks the Alliance’s 70th anniversary, but because of President Macron’s ‘disruptive’ and trenchant criticism of the Atlantic Alliance as close to ‘brain dead’, which has touched
