Gavin Mortimer

America must get tough against the Mexican drug cartels, former US Attorney General, William Barr, declared earlier this month. Likening them to Isis, he backed a joint resolution from two Republican senators, giving the US president authority to deploy the military against the cartels in Mexico. Failure to do so would, he warned, allow the cartels to continue flooding the US with their ‘deadly drugs on an industrial scale’. America’s anti-drug strategy was ineffective because, he said, ‘it leaves the drug supply chain untouched…real progress requires aggressively attacking the drug supply at its source. The head of the snake is in Mexico.’  Europe must apply a similar approach if it’s to solve the migrant crisis.

There was more than a whiff of ‘bromance’ between Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron when they met at the Anglo-French summit in the city of love. The weather in Paris was grey and cold, but there was no denying the warmth of the greeting that Macron extended to Sunak as the PM arrived at the Elysee yesterday. This is hardly a surprise: after Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, the president was just pleased to be hosting a PM who knows how to mind his Ps and Qs.   Sunak said he was ‘fortunate’ and ‘excited’ to have the opportunity to work with Macron, whom he described in French as ‘mon ami’. Macron looked genuinely touched to be addressed in such heartfelt terms.

The editorial in today’s Le Figaro heralds the dawn of a 21st century Entente Cordiale and the newspaper carries an interview with Rishi Sunak. Speaking ahead of today’s Anglo-French summit in Paris, Sunak says he wants to ‘open a new chapter with France’.   Le Figaro pins the blame for the deterioration in relations between the two countries since the last summit in 2018 on the British, specifically Boris Johnson and his ‘anti-French populism’. The French believe that is now a thing of the past with Sunak in No. 10. This conveniently overlooks the fact that if Johnson was the bête noire of the French, Emmanuel Macron hasn’t exactly been the most diplomatic leader.

There is much excitement among western Europe’s chattering classes after Elly Schlein was elected the new leader of Italy’s left-wing Democratic party. It is the first time that a woman has led the Italian left. The Guardian quoted the 37-year-old as saying her party will now be ‘a problem’ for Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s conservative PM.  On the contrary. Schlein’s elevation to party leader is an electoral gift for Meloni, whose sex is the only thing she has in common with her new foe. Schlein has not drawn any lessons from the collapse of the French Socialists Meloni was raised by a single mum in a working-class district of Rome and supported herself working as a bartender and a nanny in her youth.

Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni are no strangers to having a spat. The first was last autumn, about migrants; this time they have fallen out over Ukraine.  The Italian prime minister made no secret of her irritation with the French president last week on discovering he had invited Volodymyr Zelensky to Paris. It was, declared Meloni, ‘inappropriate’ for Macron to host the Ukraine president for dinner last Wednesday at the Elysee. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz received an invite too, which evidently antagonised Meloni even more.  ‘There were two European leaders, there were 25 missing,’ reflected the Italian PM. ‘When it comes to Ukraine, what interests us above everything else is to give a message of unity.

A notable feature of how the French public view the war in Ukraine is that the strongest support for its continuation is among voters who identify as Centrists and Socialists. Those most in favour of a peace settlement are backers of the left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the right-wing Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour. A poll in December revealed that 69 per cent of the former and 77 per cent of the latter would prefer that negotiations take precedence over the delivery of weapons to Ukraine, a number that rose to 88 per cent among Zemmour loyalists. These dropped to 57 per cent for Socialists and 60 per cent for supporters of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party.

Another 1.2 million people took to the streets in France yesterday to protest against Emmanuel Macron’s plan to push back the age of retirement from 62 to 64. His prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, insisted at the weekend that his pension reforms are non-negotiable. We’ll see about that, was the response of the people, who for the second time in a fortnight demonstrated en masse.   But they are protesting about much more than just the pension reform. This is the culmination of six years of ras-le-bol (despair), the word one hears most frequently from the demonstrators. I have seen it countless times scrawled on placards, banners and on the yellow vests worn by those on the street.

There was another protest in Paris on Saturday. According to the organisers, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise, 150,000 turned out on a crisp winter’s afternoon to opposeEmmanuel Macron’s pension reform. The French President wants to lower the retirement age from 64 to 62. But independent analysis put the numer at the protest at 14,045. It was the latter. I was there. I’m now something of a seasoned observer of the French street protest. From Yellow Vests to Covid Passports, and from the far right to the far left, I’ve rubbed shoulder with all manner of disgruntled French citizen. Yesterday’s protest was one of the jollier.