The fall of France — and Britain
PARIS: One by one, the prime ministers of France throw themselves on the funeral pyre built by Macron. The French president thought learning the trade and craft of politics was below his elevated status as a Charter member of the Davos elite of liberal bien pensants who have been running things since the end of Soviet imperialism 35 years ago.
France and Britain more closely resemble each other than at any time in their history. France has a president who does not know how politics work. Britain has a prime minister who never bothered with a political apprenticeship and decided he would try his luck at politics aged over 50. Keir Starmer entered Downing Street at the same age as Clement Attlee in 1945. But by then Attlee had lived and fought through two world wars.
Thanks to the stupidity of the ruling political class in France in 2017, Macron became president. Thanks to the idiocy of the Tory party from William Hague to David Cameron, Brexit Britain had imposed five incompetent prime ministers in less than decade after 2015.
At the end an exhausted country chose to change things and voted for a Labour Party that promised the nation they could have anything they wanted. But no-one would have to pay a penny extra in tax or VAT or social security contributions.
Macron promised in 2024 that a new national assembly election would deliver a government team that would clean up public finances, promote growth, and restore the splendour of la belle France. It hasn’t happened, of course.
Macron and Starmer could have swapped jobs in 2024 but the result would have been the same. Starmer can’t change the prime minister of Britain but he can change about every second minister. Macron can change the Prime Minister – he will soon be on his fifth in his current presidency, which still has two long years to run but the new incumbent will have no more success than the last four.
Both national leaders tried to divert attention to foreign fields. Macron proposed in 2024 shortly before Starmer’s election that Europe should send some kind of military force to Kyiv, not to enter into direct combat with Russia, but to show Europe was prepared to defend Ukraine’s right to a sovereign independent existence.
The London defence establishment and its panjandrums pooh-poohed the idea as silly showboating by Paris. However not long after Starmer entered No 10 he adopted Macron’s plan, baptising it a “coalition of the willing”. He also endorsed a massive rearmament programme, mainly based on buying American defence matériel to appease Trump. Turkey has just suspended democracy by refusing to allow the main opposition CHP party candidates to stand for any major political office and refuses to impose any sanction on Russia. But Erdogan’s one party state is part of the Macron-Starmer grouping that is meant to persuade Putin to stop his war.
Other EU member states — including Germany, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria — have made clear they will not send any troops to help protect Ukraine. The United States wants nothing to do with the Macron-Starmer initiative. Hungary and Slovakia say they will veto any EU defence support against Putin.
Above all the rising enthonationalist identity politics of Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage, both have a long 21st century record of praising Putin and refusing to support concrete measures that would add pressure on him to stop killing Ukrainian women and children.
Both Macron and Starmer are bewitched, bothered and bewildered by the new nationalist, anti-Muslim politics that have given Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, the largest number of seats – if not a majority in the French National Assembly after Macron dissolution of the French parliament in 2024. In Britain, her fellow far-rightist, Nigel Farage is topping all opinion polls with serious pollsters and political observers thinking he might succeed Starmer at the next general election.
21st century politics in France has now, as in England, given birth to new powerful force-fields of hostility to the volume and velocity of arrivals of migrants from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Both countries are ending two centuries of welcome for foreigners and grappling with too many citizens depending on state pensions or benefits. The latter are promoted by pressure groups like unions who identity and campaign in headlines on genuine needs but offer no solution except the clamour for more and more taxes. This fiscal incontinence drives voters into the arms of populist parties who tell lies that the state can provide everything. Meanwhile the number of workers decreases, either in actual terms or in working sufficient hours each week to promote growth.
The left is now infected by the malady of Corbynism in England and Mélenchonism in France. Subaltern figures like the new English Green leader, Zack Polanksi, offer the same promise that all will be welcome. But pensioner teachers or council employees who bought a house 40 years ago that has come up in value are now subject to new taxes that the wealthy avoid by hiring smart tax advisers and lawyers.
In the midst of the deconstruction of democratic politics in France and Britain, the occupants of the Kremlin and White House smile with satisfaction as the old countries of Europe seem incapable of renewal or political leadership that commands support from a majority.
Here in France, the ruling elites including former president Nicolas Sarkozy are preparing for a Marine Le Pen, or her dauphin, Jordan Bardella, taking over the state. Sarkozy says that traditional French conservatives should accept that Le Pen is now part of the alliance to weaken Macron and usher in a populist, racist administration.
There are similar calls from the old Brexit crowd for the Tories to enter into an alliance or arrangement with Farage.
What is striking here in Paris is how similar politics in France and Britain now are. Britain has become a continental nation in terms of its politics in the years since the 2016 plebiscite on Europe.
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