There are times when you might be fooled into believing all is well. I had a moment of such weakness the other day when I saw our new Prime Minister welcoming his European counterparts to a summit at Blenheim Palace. When Keir Starmer came down the steps to greet King Charles, he even did a pretty good job of pretending he wasn’t just Airbnb-ing the place for a few days.
At such points our country can look at peace. The English baroque architecture stood out against a blue sky and everything in England seemed to go on as it should.
If the Olympics go off safely it will be because of months of preparation by every arm of law enforcement
Of course, at the same time people in Leeds were turning over police cars and burning the place down. It took a while to find out even roughly what was happening, and no one seemed especially interested in trying. Still, it is sometimes hard to reconcile both of these things going on in the same country. On the one hand, the usual social order; on the other, a mess caused by generations of politicians who have turned coherent societies into pretty incoherent ones and high-trust societies into low-trust ones.
If he ever cogitates on this, at least Starmer can console himself with the knowledge that he isn’t the only leader in charge of such a country. He wasn’t even the only one at Blenheim. Emmanuel Macron also reigns over a country which maintains a calm surface. Walk around the centre of Paris today and you will see architecture that remains magnificent and people going about life with a tiny bit more joy than the British. In short, the postcard seems intact.
But underneath, things are very different. Never mind the fact that residents in the centre of the city have had to go around with a QR code to demonstrate to any questioning official that they have the right to be there. That is the sort of civil liberties infringement that the French public are comparatively relaxed about. But wonder why such strictures are necessary and you get nearer to the reality of France in 2024.
The Olympics start this weekend and they are bound to show off France at its very best, just as Blenheim did Britain. But if the Games go off safely then it will only be because of months of preparations by every arm of law enforcement. As I mentioned here recently, at least one terrorist has already been prevented from carrying out an attack on the Olympics.
As the city got ready for the opening ceremony this week, Israeli athletes received threats that ‘if you come, we intend to repeat the events of Munich 1972. You will be awaiting attack at every moment.’ It is the sort of thing that the French authorities have to take seriously. So in order for that picture-postcard version of Paris to be maintained there will be 45,000 members of the French security forces and an additional 10,000 soldiers on duty.
Does that seem to you to be a society at peace? It doesn’t to me. Nor does the fact that on the Saturday before the opening ceremony a 25-year-old Australian woman was allegedly gang-raped in the Pigalle district of Paris. She ran for refuge into a kebab shop with her dress partially torn off. Police are investigating. Again – public image and reality.
One thing that is interesting about this is that in America things are subtly different – not because America does not have its own problems, but because in America people do not simply bemoan the state of things and conclude that nothing can be done and no real problem identified.
When Joe Biden became President, he appointed his Vice President Kamala Harris to take control of the southern border crisis. Somewhat notoriously, for months Harris didn’t even bother to visit the border. Nor did she fix it: in the past three years millions of illegal migrants have poured into the US.
Donald Trump and his running-mate J.D. Vance have already made much of this, and we should expect them to make much more of it. But one thing they are not afraid to point out is that the number of illegal migrants in the US has not had unalloyed benefits. They do not just say that these migrants bring wondrous diversity and vibrancy. They assert – often citing specific names and cases – that many of these people bring considerable strife, including the rape and murder of American citizens.
In 2016 the political class tended to deplore Trump when he pointed out such things. For years the left’s media helpers told people that Trump had said that all Mexicans were rapists. He did no such thing, but the accusation continued to be levelled. Anyone with an internet connection can check for themselves. They can then weigh up which is worse: being falsely accused of racism towards Mexicans or allowing a certain number of Americans to be raped and murdered each year because the politicians can’t secure the borders.
One of the interesting things about America over the past decade is not just the realisation that something has been going wrong in the country but the belief that there is something even the most unlikely politicians could do to make it right.
Does the same belief exist in the UK or western Europe today? I doubt it. The terrible turnout at our recent general election suggests a serious ennui among the general public. The ability of the French electorate to mobilise only in opposition to Marine Le Pen is another demonstration of ill health. If there are mass protests against the current state of France they will be attacked for being ‘far right’, just as they would be in the UK. But a set of serious problems do exist, and they are not hard to identify. It’s just that no one seems to know what to do about them.
In the meantime, I’m glad that the politicians can live in the postcard. It’s just a shame that the rest of us can’t.
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