John Keiger

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 declared this week: ‘We have to produce more in France, on our territory, from now on to reduce our dependency… we must rebuild our national and European sovereignty’. His reference to Europe is not unusual, but highlighting national sovereignty is. The second ‘take back control’ stimulant comes from growing irritation with the European Union.

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 opinion poll showed 90 per cent of the French public are anxious, 39 points more than on 11 March before the lockdown. Although 64 per cent claimed their morale was holding up, 56 per cent said they had lost faith in the executive’s management of the crisis.

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 of tests per million people. For Germany, it is 2,023; Britain, 960; and France, 560. That has a consequence on the number of positive infected cases. Given that the most widely-accessed world rankings of total cases per country used by the media, such as Worldometers (updated in live-time), are based on that figure, the results are not hugely helpful.

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 country in Europe (Germany has more cases because it tests more, but only 123 deaths), but it has imposed and enforced the most severe lockdown. France went into lockdown on 17 March. The administrative state immediately generated an array of bureaucratic forms: a certificate to leave your house to walk the dog or go shopping; a certificate justifying your attendance at work rather than working from home.

‘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 Plague. Faced with Covid-19, France has not yet reached that moment of silence when one gets hardened to the truth. Rhetoric still has the upper hand as President Macron’s address to the nation on Monday night revealed.

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 to Frankfurt and Amsterdam.  After failing in the first instance, the French will now attempt to do so by force under the cover of the EU negotiations.

'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 economy. He has conducted those reforms with considerable courage in the face of strong opposition overhauling outdated labour laws, unemployment benefits, restrictive practices in the national railway system and now he is tackling the over-generous pension system. And his strategy is beginning to show positive results for the French economy. 2019's GDP at 1.

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 in its 47th day, proves it. Ever since the Enlightenment, France has led the world in developing universal principles to govern citizens’ lives in the name of equality. This differs from the approach across the Channel, where piecemeal legislation of customary English common law means everything is permitted except what is forbidden, in the name of liberty.