Emmanuel macron

Saturday

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron is Making France Great Again

Since Emmanuel Macron became president last year, he has unashamedly courted the world’s presidents, prime ministers, sheiks and chancellors. Much like Trump, his message has been clear: France is not only back, but it is great again. Trump and Macron will have the chance to discuss their strategies later this month when the American president hosts his 40-year-old French counterpart on the first official state visit by a foreign leader since his election. They first bonded in July when Trump was invited to Paris to revel in the pomp and ceremony of Bastille Day, against the grand historical backdrop of the Palace of Versailles, with all of its symbolism of

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s battles

The honeymoon is over for Emmanuel Macron. His first 11 months in office have been something of a breeze — defined by economic growth, international approval and museum openings in the Middle East. But France’s youthful President is gearing up for months of domestic hostility. ‘The war of attrition’ was the headline in Tuesday’s Le Parisien. Alongside this stark declaration was a photograph of one of the President’s enemies, a prominent figure in CGT, the hard-left trade union. Burly, bearded and belligerent, Laurent Brun, head of the union’s railway section, vowed intransigence in the three-month rolling railway strike that started this week. Macron is as determined as the strikers and

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s naive plan to revive national service

Emmanuel Macron’s vow to press ahead with plans to bring back national service for France’s youth has taken many by surprise. The French president’s insistence that the scheme would be mandatory is also something of a shock, contradicting remarks made last week by Florence Parly, the minister of the armed forces, who appeared to suggest the service would be voluntary. Not so, according to a government spokesman, who said ‘it will be universal…and it will be obligatory’. So how has this announcement been greeted? In Britain, such news would inevitably be met with howls of outrage from certain quarters. In France, however, Macron’s plans have, for the most part, been greeted warmly.

Thursday

John Keiger

France and Brexit: lessons from history

Almost 50 years before Brexit, there was a ‘Frexit’: France shocked her allies in March 1966 by giving notice of her withdrawal from an international community of largely European states (plus the USA and Canada), of which she had been a member for 17 years, on the grounds that she wished to regain her national sovereignty. French withdrawal from the integrated military command of NATO was complete within two years. Though France remained a member of the Atlantic Council and subsequently negotiated a continued role in certain NATO institutions, she left the all important collective military command which France’s president General de Gaulle claimed bridled her independence and her ability

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Macron charms, but won’t give ground on the City

Emmanuel Macron is revelling in his new status as the preeminent politician in Europe. In his joint press conference with Theresa May, he turned in a charming performance highlighting the ties between Britain and France and urging the two countries to ‘make a new tapestry together’. However, there was a sting in the tail. When Macron was asked about financial services and the single market, he emphasised that Britain’s choice was between Norway—full involvement in the single market but paying into the budget, accepting ECJ jurisdiction and free movement—and Canada, a much more limited free trade deal. Interestingly, though, he said he didn’t want to exclude any sector from the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron’s charm offensive is paying off

Summit? What summit? Coverage of today’s Anglo-French tête–à–tête at Sandhurst can best be described as low-key on the French side of the Channel. And that’s being kind. To say the French don’t care may be a slight exaggeration, so let’s settle for Gallic indifference. None of the newspapers cover the summit on their front pages and it was the seventh item on France’s equivalent of Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, sandwiched between a report on the Woody Allen allegations and the latest news from the Australian tennis Open. No analysis, little interest, just a brief mention that the president of the Republic will be in England for talks with

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

President Macron is winning the political talent show

A predictable epidemic of froggy bashing has erupted in Britain as Emmanuel Macron brings his global victory tour to Britain. He is rubbing-in his humiliation of Theresa May with the ‘gift’ of the Bayeux Tapestry, although in truth merely the loan of it, which you do not need Trumpian genius to know commemorates the last time anyone from France was able to claim any kind of creditable victory against Albion. Not since De Gaulle has Britain faced such a cunning adversary. Macron makes no secret of his ambition to punish the City for Brexit, and provoke an exodus of bankers to Paris. This is unlikely as Paris it must be

Wednesday

Adam Plowright

Brexit Britain’s Macron paranoia

In 2015, millions of French people tuned in to watch French Bashing, a television documentary which sought to explain why those horrible Anglo-Saxons were so consistently mean about France. The whole gamut of historic insults and stereotypes were analysed in the 90-minute film, from popular portrayals of the country as an ungovernable nation of idle protesters to the ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’ moniker that dates back to 1995. It struck a chord at a time when the country was near rock-bottom, confused under the presidency of Francois Hollande, hit by terrorism, high unemployment and an unrelenting stream of negative international media coverage. ‘French-bashing had become a sort of buzzword for the

Ed West Ed West

The Bayeux Tapestry is coming home at last

The Entente Cordiale is alive and well, it seems. It was announced today that, thanks to the benevolence of Emmanuel Macron, the Bayeux Tapestry will leave France for the first time in nine centuries, and be loaned to Britain. Strictly speaking, though, you could say the tapestry was coming home, since it was almost certainly made in Kent, by English women toiling under the Norman patriarchy. It tells the story of the most famous battle in English history, an event that helped to define not just Anglo-French relations but also England’s ingrained class differences. I was being facetious when I made the comparison in 2016 between Anglo-Saxon Leavers and Norman Remainers, but our

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Theresa May could learn a lot from Emmanuel Macron

Theresa May hosts Emmanuel Macron at Sandhurst tomorrow, an encounter that is unlikely to paint the British Prime Minister in a flattering light. Their styles of leadership are chalk and fromage, one assertive and confident, the other apologetic and diffident. In particular, May’s growing custom for contrition is eroding her authority. Unless she’s personally responsible for spreading Aussie flu why did May say sorry for the recent NHS crisis? It’s not a Prime Minister’s job to grovel to the public; it’s her ministers. But now she’s set a precedent and so every time something goes wrong her opponents will demand an apology. If she refuses, they’ll say she’s callous. Macron

Saturday

James Forsyth

May can’t bend Macron’s ear on Brexit until she knows what the UK wants

Emmanuel Macron and half a dozen of his top team are heading to the UK late next week. I write in The Sun today that they’ll sit down with Theresa May and a handful of senior Cabinet Ministers at Sandhurst for an Anglo-French defence summit. The occasion should be a perfect opportunity for Theresa May to bend Macron’s ear on Brexit. After all, the whole meeting is devoted to the Anglo French security relationship which will be important, and continue, long after Brexit. But May’s ability to lobby Macron will be impeded by the fact the British government still hasn’t decided precisely what Brexit deal it wants. The Cabinet didn’t

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

The French women who stood up to the #MeToo movement

Why the big fuss about the 100 eminent Frenchwomen, including Catherine Deneuve, who have criticised the #Metoo movement as a puritan backlash? Their viewpoint, expressed in a letter to Le Monde, is little different to the one expressed by their president in November, when Emmanuel Macron spoke out against sexual violence and harassment but warned against a culture of ‘denunciation’ where ‘each relationship between men and women is suspicious.’ In reminding France that they are ‘not a puritan society,’ Mr. Macron was tacitly drawing comparisons with the Anglo-Saxon world, long seen by the French (and other Latin countries) as prudish in sexual relations. Macron was subsequently criticised by some French

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

The ‘Queen of France’ is making life difficult for Macron

The new year in France has got off to its traditionally violent start, with hundreds of cars set ablaze across the country and an attempted lynching of two police officers in the suburbs of Paris. Yet in the increasingly surreal world of social media, what is causing uproar is Brigitte Macron’s breach of protocol to stand beside her husband on state visits. The custom has been for president’s wives to stand behind their husbands, but Madame Macron has said that from now she’ll be side by side with her man. ‘A woman does not have to be behind’, she is quoted as saying by RTL radio. Her comments were subsequently elaborated on

Wednesday

Robert Tombs

Right side of history

How nice it would be, in this season of good cheer, to find something hopeful to say. Being a historian, I shall try: history often helps us to see our problems in proportion. But let us grit our teeth and begin with the depressing news. Worst is the sudden emergence — or re-emergence? — of an unusually angry division within our politics and society. A large part of the political class, and seemingly a sizeable proportion of the country’s educated elite, have distanced themselves from the majority of the country. Never in modern times has there been such an overt and even contemptuous attempt to deny the legitimacy of a

Wednesday

Jonathan Miller

Emmanuel Macron looks shiftier and less likeable by the minute

One of the must-have applications for smartphones in France is called C’est la Grève, which helpfully shows all the strikes ongoing at the moment, and those to come, with useful regional breakdowns. It’s indispensable for le planning and proof that French developers understand how to tailor digital products to local market demands. At the moment at the top of the list on my C’est la Grève app is a national and general strike this Thursday, which promises to be a key moment in what looks like an increasingly desperate effort to bring down Jupiter, Emmanuel Macron, president of the republic. The French left, when they are not ripping each other to

Thursday

James Landale

Greece Notebook | 26 October 2017

I have come to Greece in search of sanity over Brexit. Ostensibly it is a symposium to discuss relations between Britain and Greece. But it is also an excuse to step away from the minutiae of the negotiations to think about the future of Europe. It was from Greece, of course, that our continent derived its name — from the mythological Europa who was ravished by Zeus and bore a future king of Crete. One contributor notes dryly that Greece is also not a bad place to think about the rise and fall of empires, the follies of politicians, the failings of institutions and what happens to elites when they

Thursday

Matthew Lynn

Macron’s biggest enemy is himself – not the unions

The labour market would be revolutionised. France would start growing rapidly again, leading the way in Europe. Tech entrepreneurs would flock to Paris, along with the bankers fleeing the City, while companies from around the world would be relocating to newly invigorated industrial hubs in Lyon and Toulouse. That anyway was the script when the centrist reformer Emmanuel Macron was elected to the French Presidency. Today we saw what the Macron revolution would actually amount to as his government finally unveiled his major set of labour market reforms. Predictably enough the major trade unions have already said they will oppose it, and the riot police will no doubt be standing

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

Why western women are now the Islamists’ target of choice

There has been an unprecedented development this year in the Islamists’ war on the West. For the first time their foot soldiers are singling out women to kill. Women have been the victims of terrorism before, murdered by paramilitary organisations such as ETA, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the IRA, because of their uniform or their beliefs, or simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but never solely because of their sex. In the era when Islamic terror groups hijacked aircraft it was rare that women were harmed. When a Trans World Airlines jet was hijacked in 1985, for example, the terrorists released all the women

Tuesday

Steerpike

Eight people who think they could be Britain’s Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron may have the lowest approval ratings of any modern-era French president during their first 100 days – but here in Britain, the bromance is still going strong. Ever since Macron came to power, male politicians in the UK have been heaping praise on the centrist politician. So much so, that at times it has felt as if they are desperate to follow in his political footsteps. So, with talk of a new centrist pro-EU party in the pipeline, which Brits think they have what it takes to emulate Macron? Chuka Umunna Once Labour’s great hope, Umunna has seen his leadership hopes dashed as his party has lurched left away from the centre. Perhaps that’s why

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s terror threat hasn’t gone away

The latest attack in France couldn’t have come at a worse time for the government. On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and his ministers dined at the Élysée Palace as the guests of their president, a “moment of conviviality” before they all head off on holidays today. It’s been a trying few weeks for them, what with Emmanuel Macron’s plummeting popularity amid a series of PR disasters for his inexperienced En Marche! party and a spot of R&R is just what everyone needs. Instead, this morning brought news of yet another outrage in the French capital. Fortunately, casualties were light. Of the six soldiers struck by a BMW outside their barracks in