The French media has been busy marking the third anniversary of Britain’s official departure from the EU by gleefully reporting the sorry state of perfidious Albion. ‘The shipwreck of Brexit’ was the headline in Le Figaro, while France’s business paper, Les Echos, declared that the majority of Britons believe leaving the EU has been a ‘failure’. A radio station broadcast a segment on ‘Bregret’, hearing from disenchanted Britons about how wretched life was without Brussels. ‘With Brexit, the country was supposed to slow down immigration, which is now at record levels,’ the broadcaster stated. ‘Public health services are short of money and manpower, despite being promised unprecedented resources.’
The other trait that Attal shares with his boss is a Europhilia that borders on the obsessional
There is a of course a small flaw in all this Gallic Schadenfreude, which is the state of the 27 countries still in the EU. As one leading economic advisor told Reuters in November: ‘The European economy has been flat on its back for a year (and) the monetary and fiscal policy plans for 2024 seem to accept the high probability of another lost year.’
The year has started badly for the German economy with figures released this week showing that industrial output continues to decline.
As for France, it too is experiencing huge levels of immigration and its once enviable health system is in crisis. Its economy is also in trouble, with downturn in growth forecast for 2024, which is expected to result in a rise in unemployment this quarter from 7.4 to 7.6 per cent. There is still some way to go before Emmanuel Macron achieves his aim of reducing unemployment to 5 per cent.
One way the president plans to do this is by reforming the rights of the unemployed, including a restriction of their benefit payments. It would be a surprise if this shake-up wasn’t met with massive street protests, similar to those France experienced one year ago when Macron pushed through his pension reform.
The man tasked with leading France through another turbulent year is Gabriel Attal, who replaced Elisabeth Borne as prime minister on Tuesday. Although the country is glad to see the back of the bloodless Borne, Attal does not inspire; one opinion poll reported that 52 per cent have no confidence in him.
Perhaps it is Attal’s youth – he’s just 34 – or maybe it’s the fact that people see in Attal all the traits that make them despise Macron: too much entitlement and too few convictions. In other words, just another paid up member of the Parisian elite (at least unlike the provincial Macron, Attal hails from the capital, having grown up in a well-to-do neighbourhood).
The other trait that Attal shares with his boss is a Europhilia that borders on the obsessional. Like Macron, Attal has a long track record of rubbishing Brexit and anyone who voted for this act of unspeakable heresy.
Campaigning for the 2019 European elections, Attal called on the young to vote in order to avoid the fate of their British peers. ‘The young British didn’t want Brexit and today they are in the street opposing it,’ he tweeted.
When a fishing dispute erupted between Britain and France in autumn 2021 Attal, by now the government’s spokesman, described Britain’s decision to grant a limited number of fishing permits to French boats in the Channel as ‘totally unacceptable and inadmissible’; this from a government that six months earlier had threatened to cut off the electricity to Jersey if it didn’t get its way.
A few weeks later it was a different kind of boat angering Attal, the ones transporting illegal immigrants to England from France. When Boris Johnson made the public the contents of a letter he had sent Macron, in which he set out five measures to stem the small boats, Attal described it as ‘lacking in substance and inappropriate in form’. He added that his government have ‘had enough of double talk… of the constant externalisation’ of British problems to the EU in the wake of Brexit.
Brexit has created problems for Britain, some of its own making and some caused by the EU, often egged on by Macron who, even before he came to power in 2017, had called Brexit ‘a crime’ and promised that in the event he was elected president he would make life tough for Britain in their brave new world.
It’s hard to take issue with the French media’s assessment of Britain as a country creaking at the seams, but they’re wrong to blame it on Brexit. It’s poor leadership from a generation of mediocre politicians who lack intellectual gravitas and have little experience of life in the real world.
The same applies to the French political class, and the German, and most of the other EU nations. That explains why a growing number of EU electorates are rejecting mainstream parties for those once considered on the fringe of European politics.
History may well judge Macron and his protegee, Gabriel Attal, as the last of a dying French breed: fanatical Europhiles who are prepared to do whatever it takes to please Brussels.
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