France

Saturday

Gavin Mortimer

Blair is wrong: the future of Britain shouldn’t involve Macron

From our UK edition

Tony Blair believes the way forward for Britain is to seek guidance from Emmanuel Macron. The former British prime minister has a reputation for outlandish claims but the suggestion that the United Kingdom can benefit from pearls of wisdom proffered by the most divisive president in the history of the Fifth Republic is baffling even by Blair’s standards. According to Politico, Blair will host a Future of Britain conference on June 30, which is a collaboration between his eponymous Institute and the Britain Project, a centrist think tank that was established in the wake of the 2019 general election and which is described by Politico as the ‘British version of Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche’.

Friday

Alexander Larman

Zelensky is the star of the Cannes Festival

The Cannes Film Festival remains the most glamorous and famous gathering of the movie industry in the world. High-profile, black-tie premieres attended by some of the best-known actors jostle alongside the more disreputable commercial market. Films on sale this year include My Neighbor Adolf, about the unlikely friendship that is struck up between a Holocaust survivor and a mysterious man who may or may not be Adolf Hitler. But back in the main festival, everything is going entirely to plan. Apparently. There has not been a “normal” Cannes Film Festival since 2019. The 2020 edition was canceled, and the 2021 event took place in reduced and rather glum circumstances in July. But now Cannes is back, back, back, bébé!

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

How far will house prices fall?

From our UK edition

‘Forecasting is a mug’s game’ is a truism attributed to everyone from fantasy author Douglas Adams to former Bank of England governor Mervyn King. It reminds us that commentators should never be smug when they call the near future right, or quick to crow at others who turned out to be wrong. I may have been a step or two ahead of the pack this season on inflation and recession risks and I’ve always said crypto, which we’ll come to in a moment, was the road to perdition. But I confess my record on property trends is frankly lamentable.

Jonathan Miller

The madness of France’s burkini bust-up

From our UK edition

To burkini, or not to burkini? This is the question that divides France in the run-up to the first round of voting on 12 June for the next National Assembly. The pre-election political conversation here had been pretty stale and entirely predictable. Enter the burkini. The political and media class is presently talking of nothing else. Not since Brigitte Bardot took her top off in God Created Woman has the nation obsessed so compulsively with appropriate female swimwear. Designed originally for Australian lifeguards uncomfortable with traditional swimwear, the burkini has not gone down well since arriving in France five years ago. Something about the garment seems to drive the French to distraction. The burkini has been widely banned by mayors of the left and right.

Jeremy Clarke

How not to fish

From our UK edition

After two nights at Le Grau-du-Roi (the King’s Pond) and a night spent within the medieval walls of Aigues-Mortes (Stagnant Waters) we drove north-west to our Remainer friend’s castle perched on the bank of the river Lot. Then duty called her and Catriona returned to Provence and I stayed on for a week to try to recoup a modicum of strength with a daily invalid regime of gentle breaststroke in a swimming pool sheltered by old walls and toddling unsteadily about in the sunny gardens, sometimes putting out my arms for balance like a tightrope walker. Any time I felt like it, I could then mount the 17th-century stone staircase to my town hall-sized bedroom and lie down and fall instantly asleep.

Jonathan Boff

Operation Chariot succeeded because it was unthinkable

From our UK edition

Eighty years ago, just after midnight on 28 March 1942, the British destroyer HMS Campbeltown crept up the estuary of the River Loire towards the heavily defended port of St Nazaire. Here lay an immense dry dock, the only facility on the west coast of France that German battleships such as the ferocious Tirpitz could use if they needed repair. Destroy the dock, and Tirpitz would be unable to sortie against the Atlantic convoys supplying Britain. The only way to do that, however, was to wreck the lock gate at the entrance. And that meant filling a ship with explosives, ramming it into the gate and blowing the whole lot up, while commandos jumped ashore to demolish the pumps, the winding gear and anything else they could.

Wednesday

Marie-Claire Chappet

The holiday spots beloved by the French

From our UK edition

As the old saying goes: 'eat where the locals eat' – but why not travel like them too? Here are six Gallic-approved destinations in France to put on your radar. CassisCassis, France Not just a liqueur, this charming Mediterranean fishing port in southern France is a magnet for discerning Gallic tourists. It’s easy to see why. It possesses all of the picturesque landscape and warm weather that epitomises France’s southern shores, with none of the cost and crush of the Cote D’Azur. It is unfairly labelled ‘the poor man’s St Tropez,’ but why pass up the opportunity for analogous charm for half the price and a fraction of the crowds?

Sunday

Jonathan Miller

Macron’s main opponent is now Mélenchon, not Le Pen

From our UK edition

Here we go again. Exhausted by a presidential campaign that ultimately produced the same choice as in 2017 (and the same result), French voters go to the polls again on June 12 and June 19 to vote for their National Assembly. Quite possibly with the same results as last time. The denizens of the Café de la Paix are not mesmerised. Abstention is likely to be high. To call it a singular election is to immediately mislead. It’s not one election but 577 of them. It’s democracy, but not especially edifying. Ultimately more than 8,000 candidates are likely to stand from left, right and centre along with the usual rag-tag of animal rights activists, monarchists, Frexiteers and greens.

Wednesday

Micah Mattix

The failure of Marine Le Pen

Following her second-round loss to Emmanuel Macron in France’s presidential elections last month (it was her third loss on the national stage), Marine Le Pen has announced her candidacy for the National Assembly. She hopes to win Pas-de-Calais’ eleventh constituency in June — a seat she won in 2017 — to oppose Macron’s policies in the French parliament, along with her National Rally (RN) colleagues. But she is unlikely to have much leverage. In the last parliamentary elections, the National Rally (then the National Front) won eight seats out of 577. The latest poll by Harris Interactive has them winning 65 to 95 seats this year, compared to 338 to 378 seats for Macron’s re-branded Renaissance party, which would give Macron an absolute majority.

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

How a May Day car-boot sale gave me back my optimism

From our UK edition

So that’s it. Is a third world war possible? It’s already begun, opined a retired US general in the newspaper. Oh good. I shouted down the stairs to Catriona: ‘World War Three’s started.’ Catriona said she’d better get the washing in, then go down to the village shop to get fresh coriander. May Day in France is also Fête du Muguet – the festival of the lily of the valley. Lovers give each other bunches to signify love, affection and workers’ rights. She returned with coriander and a lily of the valley for me. The latter was wilting a bit. ‘It’ll probably only last two or three days,’ she said.

Wednesday

Jonathan Miller

Can anyone stop Emmanuel Macron?

From our UK edition

If they weren’t insufficiently weary of politicians, the French will be invited to vote all over again for the Assemblée Nationale, the nation’s parliament, on 12 and 19 June. Citizen lassitude notwithstanding, the election may produce a louder, if not assuredly more effective, opposition to the prolongated reign of the second Sun King, the newly reelected President Emmanuel Macron. When fresh-faced Macron was first elected in 2017 in a stonking landslide, his portmanteau political movement, La République En Marche!, went on to win a commanding presidential majority in the National Assembly elections that followed.

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

Can Mélenchon unite the French left?

From our UK edition

Paris Shortly before the first round of the French presidential election I was handed a campaign flyer by one of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s activists. On one side was his photo and on the reverse the headline: ‘With Jean-Luc Mélenchon another world is possible.’ What sort of world? A leftist utopia in which the minimum wage would be raised from its current €1,302 to €1,400 net per month, new hospitals would be built, the retirement age would be lowered to 60, and there would be a fixed price for petrol, food and energy prices. Oh, and there would also be a Sixth Republic.

Jeremy Clarke

The call of opium-based analgesics and introspection

From our UK edition

On the morning of my last day in England, I drew back a curtain and there in the garden, browsing one of the flower beds, was a brown hare. It hobbled cautiously but not timidly among the spring bulbs, choosing thoughtfully like a discriminating shopper. I leaned on the window sill and watched it for perhaps ten minutes. The hare was in the process of exchanging its tatty winter fur coat for a shorter, smoother, lighter-brown one, visible underneath. Overnight late spring had turned to the softer air of early summer and I was sorry to be leaving the country at the exact point of the season’s changing. In the bedroom I regretfully set about packing my trolley bag for the flight back to Nice.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Twitter takeover, late nights for pubs and a row over leg-crossing

From our UK edition

Home Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said Britain assessed that 15,000 Russians had been killed in the war against Ukraine and at least 530 Russian tanks, 530 armoured personnel carriers and 560 infantry fighting vehicles had been lost or captured. Sixty Russian helicopters and fighter jets had also been lost. He told the House of Commons that Britain was sending to Ukraine some Stormer armoured vehicles, with launchers for Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, called for aircraft to be sent too. In the seven days up to 23 April, 2,207 people had died with coronavirus, bringing total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 173,693. In the previous week 1,289 had died.

Tuesday

Andrew Tettenborn

The relentless march of Europe’s zombie centrists

From our UK edition

Journalists rarely had it so easy as when it came to writing up the final result of the French presidential election on Monday morning. The copy almost wrote itself: the triumph of moderation, demonstrated by a convincing win for centrist Emmanuel Macron over his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen; the clear defeat of disruptive extremist politics that might otherwise have threatened European stability; and the return to EU business as usual, with euroscepticism once again off the table and the re-establishment of a stable Franco-German axis in charge of Brussels. Easy, but ultimately unconvincing. Centrists who can be trusted not to be too radical may indeed be in power in France, as they have been in Germany since the installation of Olaf Scholz as Chancellor late last year.

Monday

John Keiger

France is eternally divided

From our UK edition

A lot happened in France last night. After a lacklustre performance, long disillusioned supporters were unable to summon any enthusiasm for Paris Saint Germain football team’s French league championship success. Emmanuel Macron was re-elected French President beating Marine Le Pen 58.5 to 41.5 per cent and the official disco party celebration organised beneath the Eiffel Tower finished early. A short distance away on the Pont Neuf police shot and killed two men who drove a car at them. Demonstrators took to the streets and threw fireworks in protest against Macron’s election in Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg, Rennes, Grenoble and a host of other French towns where teargas scuffles took place. Emmanuel Macron made the shortest victory speech of his career.

Susanne Mundschenk

Where does Macron go from here?

From our UK edition

The French do not want Emmanuel Macron's party to win in the National Assembly, at least according to polls taken at the weekend. Expect revenge voting; Macron may lose his majority. How should he prepare for an eventual co-habitation of government and with whom? Macron promised in Marseille that his prime minister will be charged with implementing an ecological master plan, as proposed by Mélenchon. Does this mean a prime minister from the left? What if there is a better partner on the right around? After all, Macron has nothing to lose, since this is his last term as president, limited as he is by a two-term cap. But preparing for the after-Macron era will be part of his considerations. It will also depend on what will now happen on the left and the right.

Gavin Mortimer

Forget Le Pen 2027

From our UK edition

If Emmanuel Macron has any sense he will be back in the office this morning. Sunday night’s celebratory shindig was good while it lasted but the Fifth Republic has never faced such a parlous future, either socially or economically. One can only hope that the attack on a priest in a Nice church on Sunday morning, barely mentioned by the media, is not a harbinger of things to come for Macron’s second term. Of more general concern for France is the economic situation. Everything is rising, from the cost of petrol to the price of a baguette, and the war in Ukraine will only deepen the crisis in the months ahead.

Sunday

Freddy Gray

Apres Macron, the radical left?

From our UK edition

Bof! That useful French word – an older and slightly less irritating version of the American-English ‘meh’ – is how many people feel about the re-election of Emmanuel Macron. The centre holds even as things fall apart – in 21st century France, anyway. It was inevitable and in the end easy. Mainstream commentators, almost unanimously pro-Macron, have spent the last few days trying to inject a sense of drama into the vote by suggesting the threat Le Pen posed was great. But it was painfully obvious that Macron would win. At 44, he will almost certainly still be President in 2027, when the constitution (as currently composed) will compel him to stand down. He isn’t loved. The abstention rate on Sunday is estimated to be 29.

Jonathan Miller

The French have voted for the lesser of two evils

From our UK edition

Few scenes of jubilation as Emmanuel Macron was re-elected President. French voters held their noses and voted without evident enthusiasm for five more years. French exit predictions, based on actual voting, not exit polls, are invariably lethally on target. As the polls closed they forecast 57.6 per cent for Macron, 42.4 per cent for Marine Le Pen. The official result will be certified on Tuesday but there’s no doubt. Le Pen’s political career should now be over. Yet in her combative concession speech, she sounded as if she would go on and on We were supposed to pretend that we didn’t know who had won the French presidential election until after 8 p.m. when the polls closed in the bigger cities.