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It is hard to overstate the importance of the so-called Aukus alliance between the US, the UK and Australia — and the implicit geopolitical disaster for the EU. The alliance is the culmination of multiple European failures: naivety at the highest level of the EU about US foreign policy; Brussels’s political misjudgements of Joe Biden and his China strategy; compulsive obsession with Donald Trump; and the attempt to corner Theresa May during the Brexit talks. If you treat the UK as a strategic adversary, don’t be surprised when the UK exploits the areas where it enjoys a competitive advantage. The EU has outmanoeuvred itself through lazy group-think. While German political

Today France is outraged. First, explicitly because Australia has broken a large contract to have a French company design their submarines and for that contract to be switched to a US-UK substitute. Secondly, sotto voce, because Emmanuel Macron’s Indo-Pacific strategy has been shaken by an Australian, American and British strategic agreement entitled Aukus, to which France has not been invited. What are the facts of the matter? In 2016 Australia signed a contract with France to buy 12 conventional French-designed diesel-electric submarines for the Australian navy. The contract worth €35 billion was badged by the French as ‘the contract of the century’. In reality, only €8 billion was to go

In a big speech yesterday, Macron presented himself in almost Nixonian terms as guardian of law and order. He said he would rewrite the penal code and double the number of police on the streets. But only if he’s re-elected. He further promised at least ten specific security measures and €500 million in additional spending. Ever the triangulator, he mixed hard with soft — promising also a parliamentary oversight body to clamp down on police brutality. Nobody can accuse Macron of lacking policies, though they’re mostly more show than go. His attempt to co-opt the security agenda is thus far merely rhetorical. Body cameras for all police, a new national

Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris, whose reign has submerged the city in debt and rubbish, is the latest no-hoper to declare her candidacy for the 2022 presidential election. She’s in fifth place in the polls, although these are rarely credible at this stage and currently ignore several candidates for reasons that seem obscure. Hidalgo, the daughter of Spanish immigrants, is to run on a platform of social justice. She says she is doing so with humility, although this is not a characteristic that has so far been evident in her personality. Ruthless ambition comes closer.  It is rather obvious that Hidalgo has zero chance of finishing in the top two

On Monday, Tony Blair addressed a military think tank in London and stated that the West should continue to intervene in countries under threat from Islamist extremism. According to the former PM, who led Britain as it joined the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, an isolationist policy would serve no purpose because:  Islamism, both the ideology and the violence, is a first-order security threat and, unchecked, it will come to us even if centred far from us… Its defeat will come ultimately through confronting both the violence and the ideology, by a combination of hard and soft power. His declaration was along the lines of the one he made in

To nobody’s great surprise, France’s Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, announced last week that the Covid Passport may have to be extended beyond 15 November – the initial expiry date of the government’s controversial measure, first introduced in July. I’ll hazard a guess that come April 2022 the French will still have to show their passport to enter cafes, shopping centres, sports clubs and cinemas. April, of course, is the date of the presidential election and Emmanuel Macron is banking on his response to Covid helping him to secure a second term. His belief is that the electorate, particularly the over-50s, will be reluctant to change presidents in the midst of a

A photograph, taken in June 2014, has become emblematic of Anne Hidalgo’s Socialist rule of Paris. In the picture stands Queen Elizabeth II, then 88, in Paris to unveil a plaque at the Marché aux Fleurs, near Notre Dame. The Queen, in addition to her usual black handbag, carries her own plastic umbrella. Next to her, the newly-elected mayor, dressed in a cream outfit, has her hands free while a city official holds a large umbrella above her perfect blow-dry. The Spanish-born Hidalgo, 62, now about to announce her candidacy for the 2022 presidential election, is a woman untouched by self-doubt. Any criticism of her stewardship of the capital —

The French President Emmanuel Macron has, it is revealed, forbidden all talk at the Elysée of the forthcoming presidential election and has refused to discuss even whether he will be a candidate. His entire attention is focused on France and the French, he claims. Of course this is entirely the opposite of the truth as his entire attention is focused on being re-elected. Nevertheless, he was likely to have been opening a bottle of something sparkling in which to dip his croissant this morning with the announcement that Michel Barnier, yet another no-hoper, has thrown his beret into the ring to oppose him. Divide and conquer seems to be Macron’s

The protest movement against Emmanuel Macron’s Covid passport, which comes into full effect today, continues to grow in France. On Saturday over 200,000 men, women and children took to the streets, more than twice the number that demonstrated when the protests began on July 17. As a veteran of the Paris protests, I’ve found one of the most interesting aspects to be the reactions of passers-by as the cortège files through the streets of the capital. Some clap, some look on in contempt, others shout words of encouragement and a few hurl terms of abuse. There’s no doubt the Covid passport has divided the people, and while the protest movement

A manager of an attraction park in France was reportedly assaulted on Sunday after he denied entry to a customer. It’s alleged the man lost his rag when he was turned back because he didn’t have a valid Covid passport. It is unlikely to be the last such incident. In the space of a fortnight, the atmosphere in France has turned toxic. A hospital in Saint-Étienne was invaded on Monday by 60 demonstrators, mainly medical professionals, opposed to the measure that will force them to vaccinate or be suspended without pay. That is also a strike at a Lyon hospital that will start tomorrow. Elsewhere cinemas, theme parks and fitness

From St Tropez to La Rochelle to Deauville, there is a familiar sight this summer in many of France’s most popular coastal resorts. A year after the wearing of masks outside was made mandatory they are back, and French and foreign sunseekers are forced to muzzle under a broiling sun. It was only a month ago that the government relaxed the rule on the wearing of masks outdoors, but that was before a rise in cases caused by the Delta variant. Most of the infected are the young and unvaccinated, hospitalisations are stable and deaths remain minimal: there were 11 in the last 24 hours, compared to ten last Saturday.

What a celebration of diversity I witnessed in Paris on Saturday as tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital. Organisers put the figure at 50,000, the government at 18,000; I’d say the former is the more accurate estimation. It took two hours to walk the one and three-quarter miles between the start of the march, in the Place du Palais Royal, to its terminus at the Place Pierre Laroque outside the Ministry of Health. In total, and again depending on your source, between 114,000 and 150,000 people demonstrated across France on Saturday to protest against the planned introduction of the ‘Pass Sanitaire’, France’s vaccine passport. All ages, sexes,

Skeletons don’t always lurk in cupboards, some of them hide under dance floors waiting for a particularly rousing party to dislodge them. Such is the story of one of Napoleon’s favourite generals, César Charles Étienne Gudin de La Sablonnière, whose missing remains were discovered under a dance floor in Smolensk in 2019, over 200 years after his death from a cannonball during the French invasion of Russia in 1812. Yesterday, his one-legged skeleton was repatriated to France via a private jet chartered by the Russian oligarch, Andrei Kozitsyn. Not a bad way to travel for a Napoleonic soldier. The discovery of Gudin’s remains and their passage home unearths some complicated

One Saturday in March, I attended an anti-lockdown rally in central Paris. I was there partly out of journalistic curiosity but also out of solidarity with those Frenchmen and women who believed it was high time life returned to normal. What struck me was the similarity between the protestors and those I had walked with in 2018 in the early weeks of the yellow vest movement in Paris — overwhelmingly middle-aged blue-collar workers. The yellow vests famously had no leader because it was a protest movement that arose not out of any strong political conviction but from what the French call ras-le-bol: despair at what was perceived as an arrogant

On Sunday evening I met three left-leaning French friends for a picnic in a Parisian park. We’d hardly begun the pâté before they were arguing. One confessed that she hadn’t voted in the second round of the regional elections. The other two were aghast. Why hadn’t she done her duty as a good socialist? She had voted in the first round but she baulked at supporting a radical left-wing coalition comprising the socialists, the greens, the communists and the far-left France Insoumise. As it turned out, her vote wouldn’t have made a difference. Valérie Pécresse, the incumbent centre-right candidate was comfortably re-elected in the Ile-de-France with 45.6 per cent of

Nothing went as predicted in France’s regional elections. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National did not win a single region and Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche failed to grow roots in local government, or even act as a kingmaker. All incumbent regional candidates were re-elected, sometimes with quite a comfortable margin. Does this mean we are back to the good old left-right divide in French politics? Regional elections are not national elections, of course. Abstention reached a record high in this election and voters from RN and LREM have shunned the regional vote more than left-wing and conservative voters. Still, those regional elections challenge two important narratives that Macron had

I popped down to the Salle du Peuple on Sunday to see how the voting was going in the departmental and regional elections. Although I’m no longer a municipal councillor – à cause de Brexit – and am no longer required to help invigilate the polling, I thought I’d take the temperature. Which was frosty. The French have a reputation for strong participation in elections, but not this time. By the time the votes were tallied, the winner was clear. Abstention won by a landslide. Two-thirds of my commune’s voters stayed at home, reflecting the national turnout. It was the lowest participation in at least 25 years and a vivid illustration of

Joe Biden wants to use his visit to Europe for the G7 summit and the Nato meeting to rally democracies to take on the autocratic threat posed by Russia and China. But in a sign of how difficult that will be, Emmanuel Macron made clear last night that ‘the line I’m advocating for France, and I hope for Europe, is not to be made a vassal by China nor be aligned with the United States on this subject.’ He has also said that China should not be a Nato priority. If Nato is to stay relevant, it will have to become more involved in the effort to contain China This

I feel like a teenager again. Tonight I’m allowed out until 11pm. What’s more, I’m permitted to go inside my local bar if it gets a little chilly late on. Merci, Monsieur Macron. I imagine every other adult in France is a little excited today as the country continues its return to normality post-Covid. The curfew, imposed at the start of the year, has been extended by two hours and restaurants and bars – whose terraces have been open for business since May 19 – are now able to open at full capacity. If all goes well the curfew will be lifted on June 30, as will the wearing of

Things haven’t exactly been going well for French president Emmanuel Macron in recent days. Earlier this week it was reported that France is launching a doomed bid during its presidency of the EU council to ban the use of English in key meetings in favour of the French language. Now it appears that Macron has problems on his home turf. On a visit to the Drome region of south-eastern France – as part of his tour of France to take the ‘pulse of the country’ after the coronavirus crisis – Macron approached a group of people. When the President got within touching distance, one young man leaned forward and slapped him squarely