“We fully share the diagnosis made by the Brexiteers but France is not England. For one thing, England has won all its wars for the past two centuries and we have lost all of ours. That means we don’t have as much confidence in ourselves.”
That’s the view of France by Eric Zemmour standing against Macron for President. It’s impossible for the elites to accept and I imagine he’ll lose. The bien pensant crowd meeting in Davros last week produced a statement in which they actually referred to themselves as the elite and moaned that they were unloved!
I hope Liz Truss doesn’t disappoint by acting as a lightweight so we can win the great escape from Macron’s Europe and be friends on equal terms.
Truss is hopeless. She carries the failed group think of the FO especially over the Ukraine. How anyone could think that plank of wood should be in govt, let alone a PM, just tells you how far British culture has fallen.
“I hope Liz Truss doesn’t disappoint by acting as a lightweight so we can win the great escape from Macron’s Europe and be friends on equal terms.” Dream on sunshine! The French people (as distinct from their government) are wonderful. However, we will never be friends.
Brian, all people become wonderful once politics is removed. Friends! – well the Entente Cordiale wasn’t exactly two fingers across the Channel. We share production of parts for planes and cars; why we even share our fish with them. I like watching them play Rugby – classy: d’accord!
Besides the American rebels, we were fighting the French, Spanish & Dutch, plus dealing with Armed Neutrality from Russia & Prussia.
All in all we did quite well although we must remember that ‘self praise is no recommendation’.
Boer War? But you appear to have no idea how many colonial wars were actually fought.
Britain no more lost the American Independence War than it lost the English Civil War: they were both liberal insurrections against the crown. Who but a monarchist would identify the crown with the country?
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
I can remember going through a supermarket with my friend in London many years ago and picking up and examining everything we wanted and rejecting all the French produce. Great hilarity and enjoyment. I can’t remember what the topic of the time was, but reading this I am proud to realize that I have been a small part of the latest 100 year war.
I love some french cheeses and console myself with the thought that those cheesemakers are not responsible for French policy, and probably didn’t vote for Micron.
Here in South Africa we make our own Brie and Camembert and bubbles…. I get your point, but want to point out that Parisiennes are very rude – both times I’ve been there. Excepting the nice gentleman who flashed me a suitcase full of cash on a street corner.
Could it have been when the French refused to buy British lamb?
I refused to buy French anything then, and being of farming stock, I backed British farmers. Still don’t buy French, if there is a choice.
I think it was something else entirely… something much bigger. It was probably the yellow bellied variety of affront. No matter, we had our fun!
SULPICIA LEPIDINA
2 years ago
What an idiotic decision the ‘Anglo-sphere’ made after 1945 by allowing France to develop Nuclear Weapons. They should have been permanently ‘ emasculated’ as happened to their cousins, the naughty Germans.
Failure to do so has allowed France to strut around Europe like some demented Bantam Cockerel, forever seeking “ glory”, despite two further humiliating defeats in Indo-China & Algeria, and the embarrassing fiasco of the sinking of the Greenpeace Warrior in New Zealand, some years ago.
“Vive la France”!
Μαργαρίτα Τάντση
2 years ago
What is the alternative to Eurocentrism when a single Russian whim over energy can bring Europe to its knees? No state is strong enough to deal with the new global realities.
A Europe of nations – a military, free trade and immigration alliance. To be honest it might have included Russia if things hadn’t worked out as they did.
We are on the same page then. But this is described as eurocentrism by many.
William Shaw
2 years ago
Once in the Eurozone, always in the Eurozone.
The Eurozone is an economic prison… always the intent.
What’s amazing is how blindly countries joined.
Last edited 2 years ago by William Shaw
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
I was reminded of this piece I read at the beginning of the pandemic about the French elite and hydroxychloroquine: What’s going on in the fifth largest economy in the world arguably points to a major collusion scandal in which the French government is helping Big Pharma to profit from the expansion of Covid-19. Informed French citizens are absolutely furious about it.
My initial question to a serious, unimpeachable Paris source, jurist Valerie Bugault, was about the liaisons dangereuses between Macronism and Big Pharma and especially about the mysterious “disappearance” – more likely outright theft – of all the stocks of chloroquine in possession of the French government.”
What made this ring true at the time was chloroquine’s disappearance from many shelves in South Africa – a country which carries huge stocks because the North Eastern part is malaria country.
Where did it go and exactly who was taking it? https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/why-france-is-hiding-a-cheap-and-tested-virus-cure/
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago
France must rue the day that by legally forcing land inheritance to be split between siblings, it destroyed its landed estates and farming and land value.
Napoleonic code wasnt it, still exists wherever Napoleon ruled
Jean Nutley
2 years ago
“Condition for staying friends”. Hmmm. Sounds more like blackmail to me, as true friends do not impose conditions.
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
If the Russians do invade Ukraine, it is somewhat intriguing that it’ll be during Macron’s presidency of the EU Council.
So he’ll have to respond – what could that response be to avoid the EU looking chicken?
‘Ukraine is a faraway place of no importance to us?’ Tell that to the millions of Ukrainian refugees who’ll flood Europe.
‘The security concerns of Russia must be respected?’ The Eastern European EU countries will feel really secure after that – it could lead to them splitting off from the EU.
’We shall build an EU military?’ Too late.
2 million refugees have already left Ukraine: 1 million to Poland, and 1 million to Russia. Both fled to the nearest country, because that is what refugees do.
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
2 years ago
“Marine Le Pen crashed in the last presidential campaign when she could not explain how to get out of the eurozone, which is the crucial issue.” Ay, there’s the rub
It doesn’t really matter what a low opinion the French governing class have of Britain, when the reality is in 70 odd years Germany attacked France three times and smashed it
twice if not three times.
Last edited 2 years ago by Bill W
Andrew Horsman
2 years ago
It’s a unique solidarity, indeed, that threatens to strip millions of French nationals of their citizenship, and dehumanises and denigrate them on a daily basis, simply for asserting their basic human right to bodily autonomy and freedom of conscience. Macron is the worst example of a narcissistic tyrannical bully of a leader uttering lacking in humility, convinced of his own superiority of intellect and morality, an extremist, delusionist psychopath wrapped up in mendacious, fake centrism.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall; Macron has the wrath of the French coming whether he wins the election or not. They don’t tolerate tyrants for long.
Last edited 2 years ago by Andrew Horsman
Katharine Eyre
2 years ago
“But the French, whatever their misgivings about the EU, are more resigned to it”. Yes. I quote a very good French friend of mine: “De Gaulle was absolutely right when he said that Britain should never be let into the EU. His mistake was thinking that we should be in it”.
Matt M
2 years ago
Pulling away from the “Anglo-Saxons”, emphasising the special relationship with Germany, flirting with Russia, influencing Africa.
I would say we are, correctly, adopting the mirror image strategy. Pulling away from the continentals, emphasising the special relationship with the Anglosphere (AUKUS, OZ FTA, NZ FTA, new Canada FTA, possible US FTA), flirting with the Asian democracies (CPTPP, Japan FTA, negotiations for India FTA), influencing the Commonwealth.
Oh how I wish we’d stuck with developing links with the commonwealth countries instead of joining the EU. By now we’d have borderless arrangements with Canada, Australia, NZ, the Caribbean; and we could have had more influence over the development of South Africa, Pakistan, India and maybe helped them avoid the extremist roads they’ve gone down.
I agree Ian. But it is something we can work towards now. I like the CANZUK proposal – free trade, free movement and intergovernmental cooperation between Canada, Oz, NZ and UK. We should deepen ties more broadly with the commonwealth as well.
George Knight
2 years ago
I think ABBA summed up Macron rather well in one of their songs:
“I have a dream, a song to sing
To help me cope, with anything
If you see the wonder, of a fairy tale
You can take the future, even if you fail”
Charles Hedges
2 years ago
France via the EEC/EU is trying to recreate The Empire of Charlemagne.At it’s peak The Empire ot extened tp Tortosa In Spain, Monte Cassino in Italy , parts of Croatia, Austria, Czech Republic, West Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Beglium, France excluding Brittany. The islands of Britain were never part of the Frankish Holy Roman Empire.Consequently, none of the Kingdoms within the islands of Britain ever adopted from Rome the concept of Divine Right of Kings. The French President appears to have adopted the concept The Divine Right of Kings, the courtiers now being the graduates of the Grandes Ecoles who often come from about 14 Lycees. It would be interesting if France’s courtiers come from a smaller number of Lycees than from Britain’s leading public and grammar schools.
The question which needs to be asked, are the French civil servants more competent than the British ones? I suggest when it come to technical issues, the French civil servants are more competent than the British ones.
Malcolm Knott
2 years ago
Macron is not immortal and in the fullness of time he will be gone.
Friendship with British people?? I almost choked on my Chilean Cabernet.
Anna Bramwell
2 years ago
I read last year that Macron was going to abolish the Science Po, etc. Did it not happen?
Hugh Marcus
2 years ago
This could be re-titled The rants of a Brexiter.
It’s the typical stuff of a little Englander, ‘the French people really want to leave the EU, but the elite are keeping them in’.
There’s probably no more euro centric nation in the EU than France.
This is up there with the ramblings of Nigel Farage when he went to Ireland to talk about them leaving the EU just after an opinion poll put support for EU membership at 94%.
Lol! Do you mean the Ireland that was allowed the lowest tax rate in Europe so global corporates could bilk the welfare states of bigger nations? Or the one that was bailed out by the ECB?
Course those grifters love a bit of EU!
Yes indeed, but will that be remembered this coming Sunday, the 50th anniversary of a small disturbance, sometimes referred to as “ Bloody Sunday”?
No off course not! It will a positive ‘feeding fest’ of mawkish piffle and sanctimonious drivel.
When it comes to France, I am inclined to believe Prof. Tombs, who is Emeritus Professor of French History at Cambridge; this is his area of expertise and he has written extensively about France. Prof. Tombs has never been known to rant, he is a serious and balanced scholar, and should never be compared with Mr. Farage.
I’m not sure I would dismiss this as the rant of a little Englander.
From what I know of the French political class, much of what Tombs writes rings true to me.
I should add that I find Macron thoroughly repugnant, and a great disappointment. Not because seeks to embrace the role of Europe’s Stateman, but because he does so so badly. The Gilets Jaunes fiasco was born of arrogance and hubris, it has done great damage to social consensus around key issues of national importance. That was Macron’s fault.
His hardlining on covid, so clearly a sop to the globalist agenda and New York Times articles he hopes to read about himself, has done irrepairable damage, mostly to young migrants who already suffer from a lack of equality of opportunity. Worse, the hygiene theatre of covidism has bled to other countries, and given us the covid passports, which I believe will remain as Macron’s most shameful legacy.
It is to England’s credit that they have managed to avoid the worst excesses of covid hysteria and the social divisiveness of blind Net Zero policies. A true European Statesman would have the grandeur of spirit to see this.
When confronted with opposition he attends to bully. His lockdown dinner parties were held in contempt of the rest of his citizens by far exceeding the 6 person rule and also personally giving them Covid. His anti AZ rhetoric will have a legacy longer than Covid as it is designed as a vector for a malaria vaccine and for Ebola outbreaks. He has rarely spoken from his Olympian height about Covid but he is obviously not aware of how hard it is to book a vaccine slot in parts of rural France with pitiful internet coverage, hence how many elderly still not vaccinated. The pharmacies have done their best but a system that relies on answering a phone all to get one of the 20 or so doses doesn’t help deaf nonagenarians .
“We fully share the diagnosis made by the Brexiteers but France is not England. For one thing, England has won all its wars for the past two centuries and we have lost all of ours. That means we don’t have as much confidence in ourselves.”
That’s the view of France by Eric Zemmour standing against Macron for President. It’s impossible for the elites to accept and I imagine he’ll lose. The bien pensant crowd meeting in Davros last week produced a statement in which they actually referred to themselves as the elite and moaned that they were unloved!
I hope Liz Truss doesn’t disappoint by acting as a lightweight so we can win the great escape from Macron’s Europe and be friends on equal terms.
Truss is hopeless. She carries the failed group think of the FO especially over the Ukraine. How anyone could think that plank of wood should be in govt, let alone a PM, just tells you how far British culture has fallen.
“I hope Liz Truss doesn’t disappoint by acting as a lightweight so we can win the great escape from Macron’s Europe and be friends on equal terms.”
Dream on sunshine! The French people (as distinct from their government) are wonderful. However, we will never be friends.
Brian, all people become wonderful once politics is removed. Friends! – well the Entente Cordiale wasn’t exactly two fingers across the Channel. We share production of parts for planes and cars; why we even share our fish with them. I like watching them play Rugby – classy: d’accord!
Actually, Britain has ony won wars when in an alliance. The one time it fought alone – American war of Independence – it lost.
Getting other people to fight our wars for us has been the British genius
Falklands?
Second Boer War, Sikh Wars, Kaffir Wars, Zulu War, and on and on really.
Besides the American rebels, we were fighting the French, Spanish & Dutch, plus dealing with Armed Neutrality from Russia & Prussia.
All in all we did quite well although we must remember that ‘self praise is no recommendation’.
Boer War? But you appear to have no idea how many colonial wars were actually fought.
Britain no more lost the American Independence War than it lost the English Civil War: they were both liberal insurrections against the crown. Who but a monarchist would identify the crown with the country?
I can remember going through a supermarket with my friend in London many years ago and picking up and examining everything we wanted and rejecting all the French produce. Great hilarity and enjoyment. I can’t remember what the topic of the time was, but reading this I am proud to realize that I have been a small part of the latest 100 year war.
I love some french cheeses and console myself with the thought that those cheesemakers are not responsible for French policy, and probably didn’t vote for Micron.
Here in South Africa we make our own Brie and Camembert and bubbles…. I get your point, but want to point out that Parisiennes are very rude – both times I’ve been there. Excepting the nice gentleman who flashed me a suitcase full of cash on a street corner.
What has happened in to Julia Blinde?
Your mild admonishment seems to have sent her back to the Asylum. Well done indeed.
Could it have been when the French refused to buy British lamb?
I refused to buy French anything then, and being of farming stock, I backed British farmers. Still don’t buy French, if there is a choice.
I think it was something else entirely… something much bigger. It was probably the yellow bellied variety of affront. No matter, we had our fun!
What an idiotic decision the ‘Anglo-sphere’ made after 1945 by allowing France to develop Nuclear Weapons. They should have been permanently ‘ emasculated’ as happened to their cousins, the naughty Germans.
Failure to do so has allowed France to strut around Europe like some demented Bantam Cockerel, forever seeking “ glory”, despite two further humiliating defeats in Indo-China & Algeria, and the embarrassing fiasco of the sinking of the Greenpeace Warrior in New Zealand, some years ago.
“Vive la France”!
What is the alternative to Eurocentrism when a single Russian whim over energy can bring Europe to its knees? No state is strong enough to deal with the new global realities.
A Europe of nations – a military, free trade and immigration alliance. To be honest it might have included Russia if things hadn’t worked out as they did.
We are on the same page then. But this is described as eurocentrism by many.
Once in the Eurozone, always in the Eurozone.
The Eurozone is an economic prison… always the intent.
What’s amazing is how blindly countries joined.
I was reminded of this piece I read at the beginning of the pandemic about the French elite and hydroxychloroquine: What’s going on in the fifth largest economy in the world arguably points to a major collusion scandal in which the French government is helping Big Pharma to profit from the expansion of Covid-19. Informed French citizens are absolutely furious about it.
My initial question to a serious, unimpeachable Paris source, jurist Valerie Bugault, was about the liaisons dangereuses between Macronism and Big Pharma and especially about the mysterious “disappearance” – more likely outright theft – of all the stocks of chloroquine in possession of the French government.”
What made this ring true at the time was chloroquine’s disappearance from many shelves in South Africa – a country which carries huge stocks because the North Eastern part is malaria country.
Where did it go and exactly who was taking it?
https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/why-france-is-hiding-a-cheap-and-tested-virus-cure/
France must rue the day that by legally forcing land inheritance to be split between siblings, it destroyed its landed estates and farming and land value.
It will get forever and ever smaller…
Napoleonic code wasnt it, still exists wherever Napoleon ruled
“Condition for staying friends”. Hmmm. Sounds more like blackmail to me, as true friends do not impose conditions.
If the Russians do invade Ukraine, it is somewhat intriguing that it’ll be during Macron’s presidency of the EU Council.
So he’ll have to respond – what could that response be to avoid the EU looking chicken?
‘Ukraine is a faraway place of no importance to us?’ Tell that to the millions of Ukrainian refugees who’ll flood Europe.
‘The security concerns of Russia must be respected?’ The Eastern European EU countries will feel really secure after that – it could lead to them splitting off from the EU.
’We shall build an EU military?’ Too late.
2 million refugees have already left Ukraine: 1 million to Poland, and 1 million to Russia. Both fled to the nearest country, because that is what refugees do.
“Marine Le Pen crashed in the last presidential campaign when she could not explain how to get out of the eurozone, which is the crucial issue.”
Ay, there’s the rub
The only way out of the eurozone is if it collapses/gets wound up by mutual agreement.
Till death do us part
It doesn’t really matter what a low opinion the French governing class have of Britain, when the reality is in 70 odd years Germany attacked France three times and smashed it
twice if not three times.
It’s a unique solidarity, indeed, that threatens to strip millions of French nationals of their citizenship, and dehumanises and denigrate them on a daily basis, simply for asserting their basic human right to bodily autonomy and freedom of conscience. Macron is the worst example of a narcissistic tyrannical bully of a leader uttering lacking in humility, convinced of his own superiority of intellect and morality, an extremist, delusionist psychopath wrapped up in mendacious, fake centrism.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall; Macron has the wrath of the French coming whether he wins the election or not. They don’t tolerate tyrants for long.
“But the French, whatever their misgivings about the EU, are more resigned to it”.
Yes. I quote a very good French friend of mine: “De Gaulle was absolutely right when he said that Britain should never be let into the EU. His mistake was thinking that we should be in it”.
I would say we are, correctly, adopting the mirror image strategy. Pulling away from the continentals, emphasising the special relationship with the Anglosphere (AUKUS, OZ FTA, NZ FTA, new Canada FTA, possible US FTA), flirting with the Asian democracies (CPTPP, Japan FTA, negotiations for India FTA), influencing the Commonwealth.
Oh how I wish we’d stuck with developing links with the commonwealth countries instead of joining the EU. By now we’d have borderless arrangements with Canada, Australia, NZ, the Caribbean; and we could have had more influence over the development of South Africa, Pakistan, India and maybe helped them avoid the extremist roads they’ve gone down.
I agree Ian. But it is something we can work towards now. I like the CANZUK proposal – free trade, free movement and intergovernmental cooperation between Canada, Oz, NZ and UK. We should deepen ties more broadly with the commonwealth as well.
I think ABBA summed up Macron rather well in one of their songs:
“I have a dream, a song to sing
To help me cope, with anything
If you see the wonder, of a fairy tale
You can take the future, even if you fail”
France via the EEC/EU is trying to recreate The Empire of Charlemagne.At it’s peak The Empire ot extened tp Tortosa In Spain, Monte Cassino in Italy , parts of Croatia, Austria, Czech Republic, West Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Beglium, France excluding Brittany. The islands of Britain were never part of the Frankish Holy Roman Empire.Consequently, none of the Kingdoms within the islands of Britain ever adopted from Rome the concept of Divine Right of Kings. The French President appears to have adopted the concept The Divine Right of Kings, the courtiers now being the graduates of the Grandes Ecoles who often come from about 14 Lycees. It would be interesting if France’s courtiers come from a smaller number of Lycees than from Britain’s leading public and grammar schools.
The question which needs to be asked, are the French civil servants more competent than the British ones? I suggest when it come to technical issues, the French civil servants are more competent than the British ones.
Macron is not immortal and in the fullness of time he will be gone.
But will the damage he inflicts be gone with him?
Friendship with British people?? I almost choked on my Chilean Cabernet.
I read last year that Macron was going to abolish the Science Po, etc. Did it not happen?
This could be re-titled The rants of a Brexiter.
It’s the typical stuff of a little Englander, ‘the French people really want to leave the EU, but the elite are keeping them in’.
There’s probably no more euro centric nation in the EU than France.
This is up there with the ramblings of Nigel Farage when he went to Ireland to talk about them leaving the EU just after an opinion poll put support for EU membership at 94%.
Lol! Do you mean the Ireland that was allowed the lowest tax rate in Europe so global corporates could bilk the welfare states of bigger nations? Or the one that was bailed out by the ECB?
Course those grifters love a bit of EU!
And the U.K. bailed out Irish banks too, saving their economy.
Yes indeed, but will that be remembered this coming Sunday, the 50th anniversary of a small disturbance, sometimes referred to as “ Bloody Sunday”?
No off course not! It will a positive ‘feeding fest’ of mawkish piffle and sanctimonious drivel.
When it comes to France, I am inclined to believe Prof. Tombs, who is Emeritus Professor of French History at Cambridge; this is his area of expertise and he has written extensively about France. Prof. Tombs has never been known to rant, he is a serious and balanced scholar, and should never be compared with Mr. Farage.
I’m not sure I would dismiss this as the rant of a little Englander.
From what I know of the French political class, much of what Tombs writes rings true to me.
I should add that I find Macron thoroughly repugnant, and a great disappointment. Not because seeks to embrace the role of Europe’s Stateman, but because he does so so badly. The Gilets Jaunes fiasco was born of arrogance and hubris, it has done great damage to social consensus around key issues of national importance. That was Macron’s fault.
His hardlining on covid, so clearly a sop to the globalist agenda and New York Times articles he hopes to read about himself, has done irrepairable damage, mostly to young migrants who already suffer from a lack of equality of opportunity. Worse, the hygiene theatre of covidism has bled to other countries, and given us the covid passports, which I believe will remain as Macron’s most shameful legacy.
It is to England’s credit that they have managed to avoid the worst excesses of covid hysteria and the social divisiveness of blind Net Zero policies. A true European Statesman would have the grandeur of spirit to see this.
When confronted with opposition he attends to bully. His lockdown dinner parties were held in contempt of the rest of his citizens by far exceeding the 6 person rule and also personally giving them Covid. His anti AZ rhetoric will have a legacy longer than Covid as it is designed as a vector for a malaria vaccine and for Ebola outbreaks. He has rarely spoken from his Olympian height about Covid but he is obviously not aware of how hard it is to book a vaccine slot in parts of rural France with pitiful internet coverage, hence how many elderly still not vaccinated. The pharmacies have done their best but a system that relies on answering a phone all to get one of the 20 or so doses doesn’t help deaf nonagenarians .
Why do strident pro-EU types always miss out one E in Brexiteer? Is “Brexiter” some kind of insult that I don’t understand?
No, they think that Brexiteer sounds gallant and swashbuckling, like pioneer or musketeer, and that won’t do
Ah! Understood.
M. Macron himself has said that, given a referedum, the French would vote to leave the EU.