John Keiger

John Keiger

Professor John Keiger is the former research director of the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge. He is the author of France and the Origins of the First World War.

France would be foolish to veto a Brexit deal

Britain and France are heading for an almighty bust-up over Brexit. This morning the French junior minister for European affairs, Clément Beaune, specifically confirmed that if France was unhappy with the final Brexit deal — notably on fishing — it would use its veto. France would carry out ‘her own evaluation’ of the deal and

Joe Biden isn’t the president the EU thinks he is

For four years, president Donald Trump radicalised international relations. There was a shift towards the nation state and unilateralism, beginning with the United States. He viewed intergovernmental organisations like the WHO or the World Trade Organization with acute scepticism thanks to what he saw as their bureaucratic sloth and partisanship. His perception of the European Union and Nato was

Is Macron following in the footsteps of de Gaulle?

It can’t be much fun being a national leader these days. Be it the US, the UK, all are assailed on myriad fronts by coronavirus, widespread societal division and impending economic ruin. But being president of France takes the biscuit. Since 2014, France is fighting a war against Islamist extremists in the Sahel. 5,100 French troops

Emmanuel Macron’s Trumpian transformation

This new world disorder is distorting our vision, so please excuse an apparently fatuous question. Is Emmanuel Macron turning into Donald Trump? As the 45th President of the US prepares to step down from the world stage he may be leaving behind another disciple – Emmanuel Macron (Trump would say a ‘mini-me’). The comparison is

France is revolting against Macron’s second lockdown

Second lockdowns are increasingly difficult for democratic governments to impose and maintain. Violent anti-lockdown demonstrations in Spain and Italy have hit the headlines recently. It was with considerable trepidation, then, that French political leaders ordered France’s second lockdown to begin at midnight last Thursday. It did not help that Macron like Boris had repeatedly said

France must define its values so it can defend them

France is the most rigorously secular state of the democratic world. Separation of Church and State enshrined in the famous 1905 law was the result of over a century of hostility between the Catholic Church and the French State. Mutual hostility began with the 1789 French Revolution. Until then monarchical France bathed in the glory

How Macron reacts to the Nice attack will be critical

The suspected terrorist attack in Nice’s Notre Dame Basilica this morning appears to be the third such incident in France in the last few weeks. Two female worshippers and a man thought to be the Basilica’s sexton had their throats slit by an assassin who, it is claimed, cried ‘Allahu Akbar’ after being shot and wounded by

Why is Macron so determined to infuriate the rest of the world?

In the course of his three-and-a-half year presidency, Emmanuel Macron must have the record for the most number of international states antagonised in the shortest time. From eastern Europe to the United States via Brexit he has the knack of putting states’ backs up by a mixture of outdated Gaullian pomposity, lesson-giving and base tactlessness.

Macron and Boris are now bound together on Brexit

Last Saturday the French president and British Prime Minister had a phone conversation about the pandemic and Brexit that received little coverage. But the subject matter highlights the extent to which the two leaders have troubles in common and solutions to share. Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson have had a bad pandemic for similar reasons: lack

The EU is adrift and in search of an anchor

The EU has never been a serious global foreign policy player. Without a European army or a meaningful defence pact, the pretence of a Common Foreign and Security Policy is mere sound and fury signifying nothing. Back in 1991, the Gulf War served as a stocktake of the international weakness of the European communities with

How the EU is breaking its own Lisbon Treaty

That the European Union takes to the moral high ground on international law when it suits it is hardly new. Nor is its infringement of international treaties, even when they are its own. For six months now, the European Union has been in breach of its fundamental international treaty: the 2007 Lisbon Treaty.  Brussels has

What explains France’s Covid chauvinism?

It’s that old Covid chauvinism again. France is in denial about the severity of its new pandemic flare up and possibly a second wave. French news bulletins, but also supposedly authoritative newspapers like Le Monde, have concentrated on how badly things are going elsewhere. In the last few days, Spain was singled out as having

Macron’s Brexit swansong is about to unfold

At a solemn ceremony at the Panthéon to mark the 150th anniversary of the (re-)birth of the Republic, president Macron chose a 59-year-old anti-Brexit British expatriate to be one of five newly naturalised French citizens emblematic of what it means to become French. Macron does nothing without gauging its historical and political theatre. Coming just days

Macron’s battle against the forces of French anarchy

This week France announced a €100 billion (£89 billion) stimulus package equivalent to 4 per cent of GDP over two years. It might seem churlish to ask why the French government has put so much money on the table. To save the French economy, of course. But there’s a graver concern in France that has lately

The French are baffled by the BBC’s Rule Britannia censorship

From 1940 to 1944, the Vichy regime set aside France’s 150-year-old rousing national anthem La Marseillaise for Maréchal nous voilà, a sycophantic hymn to France’s collaborationist leader Marshal Pétain. Pétain in the southern zone and the occupying German forces in the north brutally punished any singing of La Marseillaise. During the Second World War, Land of

France is furious at Boris’s quarantine decision

The French gently mocked the pop-singer Petula Clarke on French media in the 1970s for her contortions about her heart being English but her soul French, or was it the reverse? But however much the British metropolitan classes may cloy to France as a mythical ‘world they have lost’, the French perceive the Franco-British relationship

Why are so many dictators former doctors?

Are we increasingly living under a ‘doctatorship’? The influence of the medical profession over our everyday lives – from personal freedom, to how our children are schooled, to the economy – has soared since the pandemic. But is this a good thing? Or are democratically elected governments in danger of allowing medics to have undue

What’s up with Macron’s Lawrence of Arabia stunt?

President Macron neither lacks chutzpah nor a lust for drama. His walkabout yesterday amid the devastation of Lebanon’s Beirut, following the massive chemical explosion that killed over 150, wounded 5000 and razed a whole section of the city, evoked David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia with Macron as the strutting Peter O’Toole denouncing the factionalism that

Covid-19 and the twilight of Britain and France

Is Covid accelerating the eclipse of France and the UK as ‘great powers’? For over two centuries Paris and London have been seated at the top table in world affairs. The essential element of their power has been economic, allowing both states to maintain powerful defence budgets, pursue active foreign policies and in the last

Has France been naive in its handling of Huawei?

The controversy over the UK’s use of Huawei equipment in its 5G network has not abated, despite the government’s announcement that the Chinese manufacturer’s equipment will be stripped from the network by 2027. Conservative MPs continue to be unsatisfied by this half-way house, claiming that Britain will remain vulnerable to ‘back-door’ espionage by the Chinese