What’s gone so badly wrong with Macron’s furious France?

For those of us who want British-French relations to improve, these are tough times characterised by thin pickings and little scope for optimism.

The critique of Britain favoured by contemporary French elites – former ambassadors who pontificate rudely about the UK, mainstream journalists whose comments filter through and noisy French politicians – is that we’ve gone nuts. Under Boris, Britain is supposedly suffering a populist emergency so bad it makes Donald Trump look reasonable.

This is weird, when right now it is angry France that looks more populist than Britain.

Is anyone running seriously for the French presidency not a populist to one extent or another? Even poor Michel Barnier, whose bid to win the conservative Les Républicains nomination crashed this week, had to pose as a eurosceptic populist during his primary campaign, pitching himself as a campaigner against the Brussels elite. Hardliner Eric Ciotti beat Barnier topped the poll. The much more moderate Valérie Pécresse, head of the Paris region and not a populist, will challenge Ciotti in the run-off. But that Barnier had to run on the anti-Brussels agenda and Ciotta came top suggests the main figures know the voters are in an insurgent mood.

President Macron himself is clearly a populist, or behaves like one, whether he likes the label or not. His victory in 2017 was secured by establishing a new party or movement built in his own ego-maniacal image to smash the established parties. He may consider himself a centrist, but in his posing and posturing he is every bit as much a flamboyant populist as Boris Johnson, perhaps more.

What is a populist? Political scientists disagree on the definition. The author of The Global Rise of Populism, Benjamin Moffitt, says the term is often misused in a European context. The populist claims to represent “the will of the people”, says Moffat, or they exhibit bad manners. Macron certainly fits the bill on the latter point.

France under Macron is pursuing an extremely confused policy, even when compared to the UK’s faltering attempts to get the Global Britain idea established. With Germany in transition, France is trying to assert leadership in Europe, and does so aggressively, but there is little support for this in other parts of the European Union. Macron advocates reconciliation with Russia and Putin’s Kremlin, a position guaranteed to alienate the nations of central and eastern Europe. This is at odds with France’s closest defence relationship being with the UK, a country its leadership class chooses to trash.

The election is pushing Macron further, causing him to make the most unstatesmanlike statements while castigating others for being unstatesmanlike.

Much attention was given to Macron’s comment reported this week in a French satirical magazine that Boris Johnson is a clown and a knucklehead. Insulting Boris is hardly a sport played only in France. Some rebel Tory MPs are keen competitors.

Far more egregious in terms of substance was the divisive and provocative nature of what Macron said this week about Northern Ireland in relation to the controversial post-Brexit Protocol. Macron indulged in dangerous rhetoric.

“‘The Protocol is of existential importance for Europe not to compromise when it comes to our single market, the integrity of that, otherwise there are no longer any rules at the borders,” he said.

‘It’s a question of war and peace for Ireland. So we should avoid any temptation to be less than serious.”

Avoid any temptation to be less than serious?!

Northern Ireland was a question of war and peace for the United Kingdom. More than 3,500 civilians and service personnel were killed on the streets of the UK. It was pretty existential.

In Number 10 there was consternation and some bafflement. The decision was taken not to respond, but how is it possible to improve relations with the French government when the French President behaves like this?

French elite annoyance with us Brits over Brexit is understandable, up to a point. The Britons the elite French admire tend to be those in literature, high-end popular culture, and academia, who were predisposed to dislike Brexit. The French regard what Britain did in 2016 as an irredeemably stupid move, while perhaps fearing it might, in the medium term, work.

The decision by the Brits was a rejection, and that hurts. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. In the broad sweep of history it will probably look odd that the British didn’t leave the EU earlier, when we complained so much about it. The voters here were consistently sceptical of integration yet were never given, since 1975, a chance to approve or disapprove. Only by a series of accidents, at times farcical and Wodehousian, did the British end up getting, and taking, the chance to leave.

The best we can hope for is that after the election next year the air goes out of it and there is a deescalation. This week, the French did offer greater cooperation on the question of boats and cross channel illegal immigration. The British side is confused by these mixed signals.

Let’s hope the ongoing friction at a leader level doesn’t lead to any sudden breakdown in security or defence cooperation at a dangerous moment when the West is badly divided and facing numerous threats from those who hate us.

Before then, the issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol must be resolved, or at least parked. Until Macron’s latest antics, it had looked as though the British side wanted to engineer a compromise with the EU on the rules governing trade with Northern Ireland. Now, it’s difficult to know whether a deal is feasible. Will Macron allow it? Boris gets all the brickbats, but “Manu” is not a reliable interlocutor. With every anti-British insult and provocation, the French President is making a compromise more difficult for Number 10 to agree to.

China getting away with it on Covid

Patrick O’Flynn, journalist and former MEP, asked a particularly good question on social media this week to which I don’t have the answer. Do you?

Patrick said on Twitter: “If the UK had been the source of a new disease that killed 5m+ worldwide, with dodgy lab safety a possible cause, our media would have rightly slaughtered our public authorities from day one till now. Yet China’s role in incubating Covid is barely discussed on TV these days. Why?”

Imagine the justified wailing, about populism, underfunding and incompetence, there would have been if Covid-19 had originated from a laboratory in the US while Trump was President.

Western societies, with free media and democracy, are obviously generally tougher on themselves. We beat ourselves up, rather than being beaten up by the Chinese Communist Party if we are caught daring to complain.

And yet… the crisis has demonstrated we’re not nearly as free as we like to think.

Alina Chan and Matt Ridley’s new book Viral – the search for the origin of Covid – is a must-read on the s***show we’ve been treated to. The Chinese government really excelled itself this time but was given a get out.

When Covid hit, parts of the Western scientific establishment were desperate to avoid scrutiny of China and the funding of questionable lab research in China by the US government. Major media companies and social media giants in the West became gripped with avoiding apportioning blame to China or its labs, because they saw such theories and allegations as a manifestation of Trumpian populism and/or nasty nationalism. Shockingly, the story was shut down and only a handful of journalists persisted. So, vital time was lost in the struggle to find the truth and the world moved on to vaccines, antivirals and recovery. The Chinese Communist Party must have been unable to believe its luck.

The Tories are terrified on tax

The splash, the page one lead story, the one with the biggest headline, in The Times today is intriguing. The paper reports that Rishi Sunak has asked Treasury officials to look at a programme of tax cuts.

This is kind of hilarious coming so soon after the Chancellor hiked taxes. Now, he’s worried by the damage done to his reputation with Tory activists and voters, it seems. The Prime Minister has taken a big knock too.

This all fits with something I heard again the other day after the latest Conservative Home league table ranking of the cabinet. The survey has long been reliable at taking the temperature of Tory activists. Boris came second from bottom.

Johnson is unhappy at being tarred as high tax, when it was Rishi Sunak and the Treasury who pushed tax increases in the summer. Boris feels ill-used, apparently. When Prime Ministers feel ill-used or let down by Chancellors it doesn’t usually end well.

What I’m reading

Antwerp: The Glory Years by Michael Pye. A thrilling account of that great 16th century entrepôt, a laboratory where traders and financiers from across Europe came together to invent an early version of what became modern capitalism. It was in Antwerp that Thomas Gresham learnt how the world worked. That was the inspiration for the establishment of the Royal Exchange in the City of London, the first (partially) covered market for doing deals and arranging contracts. I’m interviewing Michael soon for our YouTube channel and will email a link to members of Reaction.

Have a good weekend.