English beef: France’s loathing of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’

To find out who your true friends and rivals really are, just gauge the reaction to news of your latest success story. It is revealing, for example, that many French officials have taken grave exception to the stunning speed and efficiency of our national vaccination programme.

This became clear at the end of January, when President Emmanuel Macron defied medical opinion by unjustly claiming that the AstraZeneca jab was ‘quasi-ineffective’ for elderly people. His cynical tone, remarkable even by the frosty standards of the rest of the EU, was echoed by his Europe Minister, Clément Beaune, who stated that ‘the UK has taken a lot of risks in authorising Astra-Zeneca extremely quickly’. So far neither he nor Macron have commented on the real-world data from Scotland this week which indicates that the first AstraZeneca dose reduces hospitalisations by 94 per cent: a better result than Pfizer.

Macron and Beaune’s remarks should not be brushed aside — they represent something important at work in the recesses of many a French mindset. And this can easily manifest itself, as recent developments in Paris have revealed, in a very chilling way.

Rarely spoken about or even admitted to in France, this psychological influence is a fear of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’. This vague term denotes English-speaking influences, mainly British and American, that are deemed to pose a challenge not just to the prevalence and integrity of the French language but also to France’s wider commercial and strategic interests across the world, notably in former colonies, where Paris often tries to retain its influence.

As Gérard Prunier, a former adviser to the French government, has written, these Anglo-Saxons have defeated France’s great figures, such as Joan of Arc and Napoleon Bonaparte, pulverised its armies at Agincourt and elsewhere, and stolen whole swaths of its empire, notably during the Seven Years War (1756-63).