John Keiger | The Spectator columnists & writers

The tribute paid by France to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has been heartfelt, fulsome and moving. French media across the board have paid generous homage, as though to one of their finest, to Britain’s longest serving monarch – surpassed in world history only by Louis XIV acceding as a babe-in-arms. This vicarious Panthéonisation was admirably encapsulated by Emmanuel Macron, the 10th French president the British sovereign had known. In a moving video in English posted on Twitter on Friday, foregrounded against the Union Jack, he poignantly encapsulated the feelings of his people and their ‘emptiness’ at the British monarch’s death: ‘To you she was your Queen; to us she was the Queen’. President Macron reminded us that the Queen’s six state visits to France are unsurpassed by any head of state, not to mention the host of unofficial visits she made in a private capacity to race courses and Normandy horse breeders.

The French buy-out that explains Macron’s strategy

It’s a platitude that France and Britain are rivals and have been for centuries. But, since the 1904 Entente Cordiale, the rivalry is more a question of competition than conflict. Always, in the darkest hour, each sided with the other, even if post-war they didn’t fully recognise the other’s contribution. Britain congratulated itself over the Dunkirk evacuation when in truth without French troops holding off the Germans, the ‘plucky’ armada would never have completed its mission; to this day the French believe that American troops were more numerous than British in the Normandy landings. With the passing of the French war-time generation the postwar moral debt to Britain and residual goodwill were expunged. Franco-British relations became purely transactional with a host of pragmatic and deep agreements on everything from defence and diplomacy to security.

Boris and Macron’s ‘bromance’ is rooted in despair

Is 'Le Bromance' really back on? Boris Johnson suggested as much at the G7 summit in Bavaria this week, where he strolled arm-in-arm with Emmanuel Macron. Yet when one considers the breadth of subjects the two avoided in their discussions – no Northern Ireland Protocol, cross-Channel migration, or Aukus – it is hard to believe the basis of their renascent friendship is better Franco-British relations. The reality is that their jaunt overseas, epitomised by Bojo and Manu’s communal clowning, comes as a blissful diversionary and recreational break from domestic woes. Their new-found fraternity may lie in shared solace at their strikingly similar political predicaments. Macron may have been reelected president on 24 April, but over half of his 58.

Emmanuel Macron’s future looks bleak

The single headline across the front page of the centre-left daily Libération said it all: ‘La Gifle’. But much more than a slap in the face, Emmanuel Macron has taken a heavyweight sock in the jaw. With only 245 seats for his ‘Ensemble!’ grouping, the French president is a country mile from having a parliamentary absolute majority (289). Then there is the drubbing his lieutenants took with the ousting of three ministers, the president of the national assembly and the leader of his parliamentary LREM party. All lost their seats. Sunday’s legislative results are a full-frontal humiliation for Macron personally, ideologically, politically and institutionally. Held in opprobrium, his globalist liberal ideas have been rejected and his Jupiterian political style and hyper-vertical management of France’s institutions scorned.

Why is Macron so desperate to bring Russia in from the cold?

Emmanuel Macron should get a new historical advisor. He continues to repeat – this time at his Kyiv press conference on Thursday – that Russia must not be humiliated following its invasion and war against Ukraine. Politicians indiscriminately pluck at historical examples to justify controversial policies. For Macron, the aftermath of the First World War serves as a warning against the dangers of humiliating adversaries. According to the French president, humiliation of Germany in the 1919 Versailles Peace treaty resulted in the allies losing the peace and Germany plotting revenge and renewed war twenty years later. He actually turned at this point to German chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had accompanied him (with Mario Draghi of Italy), to emphasise the point.

France could plunge the eurozone into its next crisis

France is eternally divided

A lot happened in France last night. After a lacklustre performance, long disillusioned supporters were unable to summon any enthusiasm for Paris Saint Germain football team’s French league championship success. Emmanuel Macron was re-elected French President beating Marine Le Pen 58.5 to 41.5 per cent and the official disco party celebration organised beneath the Eiffel Tower finished early. A short distance away on the Pont Neuf police shot and killed two men who drove a car at them. Demonstrators took to the streets and threw fireworks in protest against Macron’s election in Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg, Rennes, Grenoble and a host of other French towns where teargas scuffles took place. Emmanuel Macron made the shortest victory speech of his career.

Marine Le Pen may reshape Europe – even if she loses

It has been a truism since the nineteenth century that international affairs do not decide French elections. Yet last week, only three days into the run-off campaign, Marine Le Pen gave a press conference setting out her foreign and defence policy vision. At heart, it’s a classic Gaullist project. Even if she loses, it could seriously influence French policy, because much will depend on the size of Emmanuel Macron’s parliamentary majority and the strength of radical left and right groupings come the June legislative elections. Le Pen’s international project draws a clear line between her nation-state based realpolitik – in the ascendant in France and elsewhere – and waning globalist liberal internationalism, so closely associated with Macron.

Even if he wins Macron could be facing disaster

Unaccustomed as political scientists are to florid language, they have nevertheless come up with the ‘theory of the dyke’, to explain the continuing success of the nationalist and identitarian Rassemblement National. A dyke can hold back the flood for so long, but once water has overflowed there is no getting it back. When in 2002 Marine Le Pen’s father, against all odds, beat the socialists to go through to the presidential run-off against Jacques Chirac, there was no reversing the flow. Marine Le Pen’s score of 23.1 per cent in the first round of the election this week is the highest in the nationalist right’s 50-year history. Now we are faced with the closest run-off since 1974 when Valéry Giscard d’Estaing beat Francois Mitterrand 51 to 49.

France is on the brink of a political realignment

Until a week before today’s first round of the presidential race the French appeared to be shunning their favourite electoral contest. Polls showed that undecided voters, potential abstainers or those likely to cast a spoilt ballot was higher than in the past. Covid and the Ukraine war were blamed for having robbed French citizens of their election. A further reason was incumbent president Emmanuel Macron. He has doubled down on Jupiterian aloofness since his election. He refused to declare his candidacy until the very last moment, condescendingly shunned invitations to debate with other candidates and pompously claimed that affairs of state were more important than election campaigning. Why bother when polls put him well ahead of his rivals? This complacency may cost him dear as his lead shrinks to within the margin of error.

Who’s to blame for France’s catastrophic intelligence failure in Ukraine?

From the outset of the war in Ukraine, the 'Five Eyes' intelligence agencies have accurately predicted every twist and turn of Putin's playbook. The United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have been linked in the world’s most sophisticated and integrated all-source intelligence gathering and analysis organisation since the Second World War. In doing so, they have offered up spoilers for Russian strategy, disorientating and disorganising president Putin’s planning. The losers of the war so far then are clearly the Russians whose intelligence gathering and analysis of Ukraine’s and Nato’s reactions to invasion has been lamentable. But they are not alone in their intelligence blunders. The other losers are the EU nations, for all their talk of strategic autonomy.

Did the end of the Cold War make conflict in Ukraine inevitable?

Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows, once again, that seismic shifts in the international order are inexorably followed by war. The adjustment invariably involves a declining power – in this case Russia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union – and a rising power – the West. So are we on the brink of a wider conflagration? Or might Putin's war result in a return to some semblance of peace, if a treaty between Ukraine and Russia can be thrashed out? Whatever happens, one thing has become clear in recent weeks: the Cold War ‘defeat’ of the Soviet Union – albeit morally not militarily – should have led to an adjustment of all the parties to the new international order. It didn't. This is at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Spectator Out Loud

John Keiger, Mary Wakefield and Sean Thomas

21 min listen

Spectator Out Loud

John Keiger, Mary Wakefield and Sean Thomas

21 min listen

On this week's episode, we’ll hear from John Keiger on Emmanuel Macron’s brand of performative diplomacy. (00:53)Next, Mary Wakefield on the few pros and many cons of the lady carriage. (10:30)And finally, Sean Thomas on how learning to work from home opens the door to working in paradise. (16:17)Produced and presented by Sam HolmesSubscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher.

Why does Macron keep meddling in international crises?

Just two months from the presidential elections, Emmanuel Macron’s self-belief and risk-taking — not to mention setbacks — seem to know few bounds. And no more so than in foreign affairs. Following the French President’s telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine on 20 February, the Elysée triumphantly announced that a Biden-Putin summit was agreed in principle, only for the Kremlin to pour cold water on the idea the next morning. Washington then followed suit, before Putin announced the recognition of the two breakaway Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. This humiliation comes after Macron’s Moscow visit on 7 February, which concluded with a live press conference in which Putin gently put down the French President’s youthful enthusiasm and suggestion that Russia had agreed to freeze escalation.

Zemmour, Marion Maréchal and the union of the French right

The news that the highly influential third-generation member of the Le Pen family, Marion Maréchal, will not be backing her aunt Marine for the French presidency is ‘brutal, violent and painful’, in Marine’s words. But beyond its emotional impact on the Le Pen family, for whom politics, betrayal and intrigue have always been of Shakespearean dimensions, this is potentially an earthquake in French politics. For the 32 year old intellectual branch of the family has hinted that she may join Éric Zemmour’s campaign. Far more important than its impact on the presidential race is the potential to achieve what was the quest of General de Gaulle in 1958 and more recently Eric Zemmour: union of the French right in a single British style broad church conservative party.

Could Marine Le Pen be shut out of France’s election?

Could France's upcoming presidential election risk destabilising the country, whether or not Emmanuel Macron triumphs? So far, nearly 40 candidates have declared their intention to stand in April's poll. But to qualify, they face another hurdle: one which several key candidates, including Marine Le Pen, Éric Zemmour and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, are struggling to overcome. Together, Le Pen (16.5 per cent), Éric Zemmour (12.5 per cent) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (ten per cent) enjoy the support of nearly four in ten French voters. But they might be shut out of the race. If so, a real democratic chasm would open up, undermining the whole election and the legitimacy of the winner. Every candidate in the presidentials must deal with the system of parrainages, which requires a person running for office to validate their eligibility.

France has the most to lose from Britain’s turn away from Europe

It was Napoleon who declared that ‘a state has the politics of its geography’. We do well to remember that in taking stock of European international relations as we speculate on a new year and beyond. By Europe is meant the European continent, ‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’, in de Gaulle’s words. Not the 27-member European Union, which Brussels linguistically and imperialistically conflates with the 44 sovereign states that the UN defines as Europe. Of those 44 states, four are still the European great powers, as they have been since at least 1870: Britain, Germany, France, and Russia. They are still the continent’s most populous, wealthiest (except Russia), and militarily prepared (except Germany). Over the longue durée their geostrategic positions have changed little, bar post-war Germany’s.

The remarkable rise of French sovereignism

The French presidential campaign reveals French voters’ widespread urge to roll back EU powers. The top five candidates for the April 2022 elections (Emmanuel Macron excluded) have French national sovereignty, ‘taking back control’ and a concomitant reduction in EU powers as main planks of their manifestos. What the French refer to as ‘sovereignist’ policies clearly meet the expectations of French voters as opposed to the globalism and ever-more-Europe favoured by Emmanuel Macron. But it is the means of taking back control proposed by the five presidential candidates that is explosive. All opinion polls regularly show these ‘sovereignist’ candidates garnering some 65 per cent of French support. The Harris Interactive poll of 3 November confirms the pattern: Éric Zemmour (17-18 per cent), Marine Le Pen (15-16 per cent), Xavier Bertrand (14 per cent), Valérie Pécresse (10 per cent), Michel Barnier (9 per cent).

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 a British-led coalition at Waterloo and exiled to Saint Helena in the south Atlantic. But his lesser nephew, whose obsession with his uncle’s glory drove him to flatulent demagoguery at home, grandiose schemes abroad and humiliating defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870. Under the last monarch of France, the country descended into the revolutionary Commune, was amputated of Alsace-Lorraine and prostrated before a united and all-powerful Germany. The lesser Napoleon was eventually deposed, vilified and outlawed to Chislehurst, outside London. It was to Napoleon III that Karl Marx was referring in his famous quote: 'History repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

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 sulk that keeps on giving. After recalling its ambassadors to Australia and the US, Paris cancelled last week’s scheduled bilateral Franco-British defence summit. France is also reported to be seeking to delay the EU-Australia trade deal whose twelfth meeting was organised for next month. The French are all the more bruised for the major powers in the Indo Pacific – Japan and India – welcoming the Pact while Paris has received only muted support from EU members. France is even extending her sulk retrospectively to others who recently declined French defence products. Le Monde reported that the planned November visit of the Swiss Confederation president to Paris was cancelled in retaliation for Switzerland rejecting a contract to buy French Rafale fighter aircraft in favour of American F-35s.

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, the US and the UK continues. France has recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington (though significantly not from London) for ‘immediate consultations’; the well-worn diplomatic gesture of discontent. This is the first occasion ever in over two centuries of Franco-American friendship. Last night in another outburst of petulance, the French embassy in Washington cancelled the gala to celebrate Franco-American friendship. The festivities were to mark the 240th anniversary of the crucial Battle of the Capes when the French navy defeated its British counterpart in defence of American independence.

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 submarines and for that contract to be switched to a US-UK substitute. Secondly, sotto voce, because Emmanuel Macron’s Indo-Pacific strategy has been shaken by an Australian, American and British strategic agreement entitled Aukus, to which France has not been invited. What are the facts of the matter? In 2016 Australia signed a contract with France to buy 12 conventional French-designed diesel-electric submarines for the Australian navy. The contract worth €35 billion was badged by the French as ‘the contract of the century’. In reality, only €8 billion was to go to the 60 per cent state-owned French company Naval Group.

Is the EU trying to hamstring the French military?

Much recent discussion has focussed on the collapse of Afghanistan and the decline of the West. The humiliating American-led Western retreat from Kabul is most poignant for the signal it sends to other ‘protected’ states, present-day and future. The Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, Global Times, mockingly jibed in its editorial at the history of America abandoning its allies and warning how this might be an omen for Taiwan. But the Afghan smokescreen has obscured another aspect of Western decline: a European Court of Justice ruling of 15 July enforcing the same restrictions on ‘work time’ for member states’ military personnel as for any other worker, except on clearly specified military operations. If applied to the letter, the ruling would hamstring France as an effective operational military power and by extension constrain an important arm of western defence.

France’s democracy is in deep trouble

Today is the 232nd anniversary of the great French revolution. Time to take the temperature of the nation. The regional elections of 20 and 27 June changed nothing of France’s regional complexion, but revealed much about the worrying state of the nation. The same regional presidents were re-elected to the 12 metropolitan regions: seven for the right, five for the left. The traditional parties cried victory. They have been fighting for their survival since 2017 when Macron’s LREM party burst onto the scene from nowhere. 2021’s revenge was the more sweet for the old guard, with a serious beating being given not only to Macron’s camp – which scored a humiliating seven per cent of the vote – but also to Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, which had hoped to gain three regions but got none and came third nationally.

Why is Macron feigning outrage at the Danish spying scandal?

The feigned outrage in Berlin – but mostly in Paris – at the USA’s proxy use of Denmark’s intelligence services to intercept submarine cable traffic to spy on European leaders raises more than a wry smile. Allies have always spied on allies for legitimate reasons. Few have done so, and continue to do so, as much as the French. As president of France and commander-in-chief of the French armed forces, Emmanuel Macron will be perfectly aware of this. The French foreign intelligence service, DGSE, runs an interception programme on submarine cables that listens in to potential enemies and friends in similar fashion to the US National Security Agency or Britain’s GCHQ. The French army’s Emeraude programme intercepts and deciphers rivals and friends’ encrypted international diplomatic and industrial communications from its listening posts around the world on remnants of the French empire.

France needs Britain more than ever

‘What is grave about this situation, Messieurs, is that it is not serious’, was how General de Gaulle addressed his cabinet following the attempted putsch des généraux in April 1961. That could equally apply to recent Franco-British ructions over fishing rights in the Channel Islands. It is mere gesture politics, for all the French retaliatory threats to cut off the electricity supply to Jersey, the British dispatch of two Royal Navy vessels and the French countering with two patrol boats. Behind the facade France and Britain are serious military and diplomatic allies bound by important and wide-ranging security treaties that go beyond just Nato. But it is the French who have the most to lose were relations between Paris and London to deteriorate beyond the cosmetic.

France’s military wages war on Macron’s values

On 21 April 1961 France’s most senior generals staged a putsch in French Algiers, still an integral part of France. The military coup was in reaction to the policies of the president of the Republic, General de Gaulle, and his belated decision to abandon Algeria to independence. The generals felt this betrayed their honour and that of their fallen comrades after seven years of a bloody war against Algerian ‘terrorists’ to keep Algeria French. Fast forward sixty years to 21 April 2021. Twenty retired generals (some four-star), a hundred mostly retired senior officers and a thousand military personnel signed a chilling letter in the right-wing French weekly Valeurs actuelles addressed to the President of the Republic, the government and parliamentarians.

What a Le Pen win would mean for Brussels

A Marine Le Pen victory in a year's time can no longer be ruled out. Other than opinion polls regularly pointing to her place in the second round as a certainty, a few, such as Harris Interactive on 7 March, put her on the cusp of winning the second round with 47 per cent to Macron’s 53 per cent — a dramatic improvement on her 2017 score of 34 to Macron’s 66. The traditional republican front against the radical right is crumbling and the stigma of voting Le Pen is diminishing. More of the electorate are coming round to the Rassemblement National’s views on national sovereignty, immigration, crime and security, and — with Brussels’s shambolic management of the pandemic — on the EU itself. Whether Marine wins in 2022 or not, the world’s leading powers will, or should, be gaming the scenarios.

Macron’s Napoleon complex

May 5th this year will be the two hundredth anniversary of Napoleon’s death on Saint Helena, the tiny island in the south Atlantic where the British confined the Emperor to Longwood House after defeat at Waterloo in 1815. After much hesitation, Emmanuel Macron has decided that France will commemorate the Emperor’s place in French history. Though the most recognisable historical figure in all surveys of the French, almost no public spaces or institutions bear his name. Monarchy and Republic cancelled him. Bonaparte divides. He is at once the figure who tamed the Revolution, drastically reformed France and yet the dictator who overran Europe and reinstated slavery. President Jacques Chirac abhorred him, and in 2005 refused any state celebration of the 200th anniversary of his greatest military victory at Austerlitz.

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