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.
‘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
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
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,
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
What was Emmanuel Macron playing at when he threatened to veto a second EU Brexit extension in October? Few would contest he was attempting to pressure British MPs to vote through Boris Johnson’s newly negotiated withdrawal agreement. He failed. But it’s also worth asking another question: why did Macron stick his neck out for Boris Johnson, a
Armistice day this year marks one hundred and one years since the guns were silenced on the western front. Four years of commemorations of the ‘seminal catastrophe’ of modern times, the calamity from which other calamities sprang, has also meant a wave of ‘new’ accounts of varying quality, none more so than for the causes
The death today of the Fifth Republic’s fifth president, at the age of 86, is also the passing of its most romanesque character. Tall and debonair, Jacques Chirac’s charms worked their magic with the ladies at a higher rate than even the standard operating procedure for most French presidents. Chirac’s social and political ascension bears the
‘France has a German policy, she has no other’, remarked the seasoned observer of international affairs and future editor of Le Monde André Fontaine in 1952. With a British withdrawal from the EU she is again confronted by an old demon dating from 1871 : management of a dominant Germany on the continent of Europe.
One thing on which Remainers and Brexiteers can agree is that Brexit delayed is Brexit denied. The government continues to proclaim that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October with or without a deal. But No. 10 is acutely sensitive to the possibility of a parliamentary manoeuvre designed to compel the executive, through
When Boris meets Macron at the G7 meeting on 24 August in Biarritz, it will be one of the first international meetings of his premiership. What will be the dynamics of that tête-à-tête? Will Macron resort to the bonhomie he used – unsuccessfully as it turned out – in his first major encounter with Donald
At a time when the EU is at its least popular and, worse still, least respected, it is worth reflecting on how the idea for a united Europe developed – and where it went wrong. The Spectator’s reprint last week of Christopher Booker’s 2014 article ‘How the first world war inspired the EU’ is a
Silence has befallen French pronouncements on Brexit. Le Monde’s vitriolic editorial (12 June 2019) on Boris Johnson apart, the scene is remarkably calm. But this isn’t good news. In fact, such silence is often a sign of French anxiety and a presage to trouble, particularly when Britain is concerned. As rationalists, the French are frequently
As the European elections approach, Europe’s oldest liberal democracies – Britain and France – are in turmoil. Taking the long view, Britain’s problems are circumstantial and exceptional. France’s, by contrast, are renewing with more extreme political traditions that have risen and fallen, but never disappeared, over the last two centuries. Gavin Mortimer’s blog on Coffee House describes the seemingly
As the European parliament elections approach, the continent’s navel-gazing is ever more myopic. Even its two most outward focused states, France and Britain, are consumed by domestic crises. And yet in Europe’s backyard – across the Mediterranean, in Algeria – radical change is taking place with potentially serious ramifications for the European Union and France.
