Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron rekindled their bromance on Saturday, swapping tweets prior to England’s World Cup quarter-final clash with France. It was a bit of fun, diplomatic joshing, but Sunday morning will have felt a whole lot sweeter for the president of France.
He is a genuine football fan, not something that can be said of the Prime Minister, but Macron also knows how important this World Cup is for a France mired in economic and social woe. The same was true for England, and Sunak must have cursed Harry Kane more than most as he ballooned the ball over the bar from the penalty spot.
The World Cup was the last chance to end a disastrous year for the Conservative party on a positive note. Imagine if Harry and his boys had beaten the French, then the Moroccans, and triumphed in the final next Sunday. How Sunak would have led the country in celebrating the homecoming of football. Rail strikes? Who cares! We’re the world champs.
France and Britain are becoming Third World nations because of two decades of inept and immature governance
Instead the future is bleak. Not just rail strikes, but industrial action by highway workers, ambulance staff, bus drivers, teachers, nurses and postal workers will bring much of Britain to a standstill this winter.
Britain’s enthusiasm for striking has startled even the French who know a thing of two about downing tools. The newspapers have been reporting events across the Channel with a touch of surprise. Not that there is any schadenfreude though: France is also bracing itself for mass travel disruption over the Christmas period with both the rail and air industry planning to strike.
During the build up to Saturday’s quarter-final it was billed as the clash of the heavyweights; in a football sense, yes, it was. But economically, socially and culturally it was the clash of the has-beens.
In both France and England (make that Britain) there is a growing sense that the nation is irreparably broken. ‘Britain is mired in strikes and economic decline, no matter who governs,’ was the headline in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph. In France, this week’s edition of the current affairs magazine Marianne is devoted to ‘France’s Breakdown’. Over twelve pages the magazine chronicles the reasons why the Republic is coming apart at the seams. The similarities are striking to Britain, the only difference being that France’s ruling class can’t blame their demise on leaving the EU.
It’s the question that Britain’s die-hard Remainers always avoid answering. If Brexit is to blame for Britain’s chaos, what explains France’s descent into what some commentators have termed ‘Third Worldisation’? One of those, Guillaume Bigot, explained on television last week: ‘As in third world countries, the state is weak […] The state costs more and more, and gets more into debt as in third world countries.’
Public services are failing, including the health service, which, contrary to what some British observers think, is far from the efficient system it once was. Immigration is out of control, violent crime is soaring, as are food and fuel prices. Millions of young people prefer to live on benefits rather than earn an honest wage, public sector workers promise a winter of discontent and now comes the prospect of blackouts next month.
Last week Macron railed against the merchants of doom, damning ‘the scenarios of fear’ about possible power cuts in January. Two days later he stoked some fear of his own by masking up in a press conference. Covid is back, was his message, and it’s the ‘responsibility’ of each and every French person to do their bit to contain the ninth wave of the virus.
There is indeed more than a whiff of ‘Third Worldisation’ to both Britain and France in 2022. Their respective governments blame Covid and, more specifically, Vladimir Putin, but their people are not fooled. It wasn’t ‘Mad Vlad’ who forced their countries into ruinous lockdowns, and it wasn’t the Russian president who pressured them into their Net Zero orthodoxy.
France and Britain are transitioning from First World to Third World nations because of two decades of inept and immature governance by politicians who are utterly disconnected from the people they lead. They are technocrats not ideologues, men and women who have no conviction or vision. They prefer virtue signalling to bold strategy.
England are coming home, once more without the World Cup, while France face Morocco in what should be a pulsating semi-final on Wednesday. Call it the clash of the Third World giants.
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