France
Macron is following in the failed footsteps of the wrong Napoleon
Is Emmanuel Macron turning into Emperor Napoleon III? Not the great Napoleon who conquered Europe and was eventually defeated by…
Is Britain heading for a full-blown fish war with France?
As the COP26 summit gets underway, a diplomatic Brexit row is escalating on the sidelines of the conference over fish.…
France is too Catholic to forgive Britain for Brexit
Former Chancellor Nigel Lawson famously said that the National Health Service is the nearest thing we British have to a…
Macron’s pointless fish war
During the now virtually forgotten cod wars between Iceland and the United Kingdom from 1958 to 1976, the diminutive foreign…
Zemmour’s xenophobia
The received opinion is that Islam and immigration are Éric Zemmour’s prime targets as his putative presidential campaign gathers pace. But…
A night in Béziers
Zemmour’s star power is undeniable
The Z factor
France’s new insurgent, Éric Zemmour
The idiotic myth of the ‘lone wolf’ attack
In the summer of 2020 the French Senate published a report on the ‘Development of Islamist Radicalisation and the means…
Macron may well win. But Macronism is dead
President Emmanuel Macron was in an expansive mood this week as he commandeered the splendid beaux arts Grand Palais in…
France’s political elite created Eric Zemmour
Love him or loathe him, Eric Zemmour is a breath of fresh air in French politics. Before he appeared as…
Low life
The chesty Corsican taxi driver was giving me his earnest appraisal of the way things were headed in France politically.…
Power fail: French tantrum diplomacy is wearing thin
It’s hard for tabloid journalists to engage in mad hyperbole when politicians seem all too willing to do it for…
Macron’s selective defence of free speech
In the early years of his presidency, Emmanuel Macron became known as Monsieur ‘En Meme Temps’. The president of France…
Eric Zemmour is eating Marine Le Pen alive
French opinion polls are best taken with a generous bucket of sel de Guérande but this evening’s drop of a…
Von der Leyen is the real winner of the German elections
The bald guy who leads the Social Democrats. The earnest looking Green lady. Or perhaps the guy in the charcoal-grey…
Emmanuel Macron and the art of tantrum diplomacy
France’s fit of pique following Australia’s cancelled submarine contract – and the signing of the Aukus pact – is a…
The Bataclan trial is forcing France to confront some difficult questions
It’s a stroke of good fortune for France that Salah Abdeslam is a coward. Had he not been he would…
Dangerous waters
The case against Aukus
Diary
As the cross-Channel ferry noses into Ouistreham, I have a perfect view westward along the D-Day beaches. The excitement of…
The EU should keep out of France’s spat with Australia
Ursula von der Leyen has demanded a full investigation. EU officials are considering pulling out of technology talks with the…
Biden is losing Nato
The forming of the Australia-UK-US (Aukus) military alliance in the Pacific shows how everything Trump can say, Biden can do.…
The real reason France was excluded from Aukus
The fallout from Australia’s cancellation of its submarine contract with France and the new trilateral Indo-Pacific security pact between Australia,…
Aukus is a disaster for the EU
It is hard to overstate the importance of the so-called Aukus alliance between the US, the UK and Australia —…
Low life
With a French health card everything is free for us cancer patients, even taxis to and from the hospital. ‘This…
Macron’s ambitions have been torpedoed by Aukus
Today France is outraged. First, explicitly because Australia has broken a large contract to have a French company design their…
