Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Why doesn’t Emmanuel Macron like Britain?

Why is Emmanuel Macron raging against Britain? The French president has returned to the subject of the British once again in the course of his Great National Debate. To be honest, thus far this has been something of a great Macron soliloquy, as he finds it difficult to stop talking. It was inevitable that during one of his lengthy televised discourses (there have now been three) he would turn once again to his new favourite subject, and so he did.

As he strutted across the stage in Drôme, holding forth to an audience of local worthies that looked more bemused than enthusiastic, Macron declared that the British were mad, their referendum proof that referendums are rubbish, that Brexit is unachievable, that the British notion of independence from the EU was demented, and that British society was tearing itself apart. This, apropos of Macron’s belief in the EU, and only the EU, as the ultimate guarantor of security and freedom. 

We can put to one side the irony that in Brexit Britain, police are not yet firing gas cylinders at rioters burning bankers’ Porsches, although defacement of national memorials seems a tale of two cities. Also, allow me to note personally the absolute lack of resonance of this message, in la France profonde. There is keen interest here in France’s meeting with England in the Six Nations on February 10.  Macron’s rant, not so much.

The question naturally arises: why does Macron hate the British so much? 

He has form. Throughout the Brexit talks he has always taken an aggressive, confrontational attitude. Partnership seemed never to be on offer. If Britain chose to obstruct ever-closer union, and declined to accept Franco-German hegemony in the EU, it would suffer. During his presidential campaign he stood outside Downing Street, where he’d been received by May, and promised a red carpet for bankers leaving the City for Paris.

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