John Lichfield

John Lichfield was Paris correspondent of The Independent for 20 years. Half-English and half-Belgian, he was born in Stoke-on-Trent and lives in Normandy.

@john_lichfield

The Gilets Jaunes achieved nothing

17 Nov 2023

Macron needs to be more like Thatcher

27 Mar 2023

Is Macron ready for a street fight?

23 Jan 2023

Could Jordan Bardella split the French Right? Marine Le Pen's replacement as RN leader may hurt the party

07 Nov 2022

Is revolution brewing in France?

21 Oct 2022

Will Macron call another election?

24 Aug 2022

Emmanuel Macron: no longer Jupiter, but Vulcan The President now sees himself as a different kind of Roman God

14 Jul 2022

Calamity for Macron two months after his re-election The French President is staring down the barrel of a hung parliament

20 Jun 2022

Macron’s tormented second term

10 Jun 2022

Does France need a Prime Minister?

25 May 2022

Can Mélenchon unite the French Left?

11 May 2022

Vaccine mandates hit Macron… in the Caribbean Anger at last year's Covid restrictions boosted support for Marine Le Pen

26 Apr 2022

Emmanuel Macron still faces ‘round three’ Parliamentary elections could be a big stress test for the re-elected President

25 Apr 2022

The Presidential debate revealed a new side to Macron The French president was aggressive, bordering on angry

21 Apr 2022

Don’t write off Marine Le Pen Emmanuel Macron faces a much tighter contest this year

11 Apr 2022

How Marine Le Pen conquered Normandy

11 Apr 2022

Is Emmanuel Macron frightened of Vladimir Putin? Fear is one explanation for the French President's diplomatic efforts

28 Mar 2022

Violence has returned to Corsica

16 Mar 2022

Emmanuel Macron’s party is filled with odd-balls and misfits En Marche has many colourful characters

04 Mar 2022

Putin has secured a Macron victory

01 Mar 2022

Nicolas Sarkozy plays coy in French election campaign The former French president has refused to endorse Valerie Pécresse

11 Feb 2022

Has Macron already won?

08 Feb 2022

Grading the French Left: less than adequate The highly touted popular primary failed to unify Left-wingers

31 Jan 2022

It’s transfer season on the French hard Right Three politicians defect from Marine Le Pen to Éric Zemmour

24 Jan 2022

France’s answer to Partygate: honeymooning in Ibiza Macron's education minister changed the rules while on a holiday break

21 Jan 2022

The impotence of the French Left

19 Jan 2022

It’s Valérie Pécresse, not Zemmour, that Macron fears Unlike the populists, the centre-Right candidate could assemble a coalition

06 Jan 2022

Three ways Macron could lose France

04 Jan 2022

The Anglo-French fish war ends without victory A breakthrough in Brussels this weekend

13 Dec 2021

Emmanuel Macron kickstarts his re-election campaign The president hopes that an optimistic message will serve as a counter to Zemmour's declinism

10 Dec 2021

Valérie Pécresse won’t save France

08 Dec 2021

Could France have its first female president next year? Valérie Pécresse may pose a bigger threat to Macron than Éric Zemmour

03 Dec 2021

The world according to Éric Zemmour

01 Dec 2021

The Calais crisis can’t be solved

26 Nov 2021

French vaccine rule triggers violent protests in Guadeloupe Mandatory vaccination for emergency workers has led to island-wide demonstrations

25 Nov 2021

Brigitte Macron says ‘non merci’ to gender neutral pronouns Linguists fear 'le wokism' is set to destroy the language of love

19 Nov 2021

Will Éric Zemmour’s Bataclan stunt backfire? The polemicist has been accused of capitalising on the 2015 terror attacks

15 Nov 2021

The Franco-British fish war is far from over Reports in the Daily Mail are misleading

09 Nov 2021

How Britain betrayed Macron

03 Nov 2021

The Anglo-French fish war of 2021 has begun Do not underestimate the level of pettiness we are about to encounter

28 Oct 2021

Watch out Macron: the Gilet Jaunes are back It may not be Éric Zemmour that the French president has to worry about

21 Oct 2021

Michel Barnier could be the next French president

20 Oct 2021

Macron is swapping arrogance for football The President thinks sport is the way to reach voters alienated by his aloof style

12 Oct 2021

Bernard Tapie: a most un-French billionaire The disgraced Marseille public figure lived multiple lives and told multiple lies

04 Oct 2021

What’s behind Macron’s fury?

20 Sep 2021

Priti Patel is playing a dangerous game with France Britain risks losing its favourable arrangements with France on migrants

10 Sep 2021

Can Macron save Marseille? The President has a plan for France's poorest and most violent city

03 Sep 2021

How France fell for QAnon

02 Sep 2021

Michel Barnier is very popular… in Britain, not France The chances of him being elected President of the Republic are nil

27 Aug 2021

Macron’s vaccine passport gamble

06 Aug 2021

France’s anti-vax movement turns nasty Vaccination centres have been burnt to the ground

20 Jul 2021

The French Greens fight — and lose — a pointless statue war Sandbagging plans for a new monument is a waste of political capital

12 Jul 2021

Macron’s humiliating dilemma

02 Jul 2021

Regional elections reveal Macron’s biggest failure The French president has failed to build a grassroots movement

21 Jun 2021

How Karim Benzema became a political football Marine Le Pen is attacking a footballer who snubbed Algeria for France

15 Jun 2021

France’s mega-mosque problem

11 Jun 2021

Why Emmanuel Macron needed that slap A wee fracas is just what the French President wanted

09 Jun 2021

Macron, the failed Machiavelli

17 May 2021

Ceasefire declared in the great Jersey-France whelk war But strangely, the media won't report on it

14 May 2021

Don’t believe the hype: there is no ‘cod war’ in Jersey The British press is, once again, getting carried away

06 May 2021

How the Nazis split Britain

30 Apr 2021

France’s generals have disgraced themselves Threatening a military coup has dangerous ramifications

27 Apr 2021

Why does France’s youth support Marine Le Pen? The Right-wing leader is on course to gain young voters to next year's election

16 Apr 2021

Macron’s fake war on the elites

13 Apr 2021

Why Macron had to take on Islamism

11 Mar 2021

France can’t cancel Napoleon

26 Feb 2021

Has Macron lost the plot?

03 Feb 2021

French cartoonists are in trouble again

22 Jan 2021

Will Brexit rob France of M&S?

08 Jan 2021

How the Black Blocs seized French streets

16 Dec 2020

France is infected with anti-vaxxers

16 Nov 2020

Is France’s secularism worth dying for?

19 Oct 2020

The failure of France’s Greens

23 Sep 2020

Could a comedian topple Macron?

10 Aug 2020

The everlasting saga of the Le Pen family

09 Jul 2020

The truth about the Battle of Dijon

22 Jun 2020

Will Macron dump his Prime Minister?

04 Jun 2020

Didier Raoult: the man whose Covid ‘cure’ went viral

24 Apr 2020

Can Emmanuel Macron reinvent himself?

21 Apr 2020

The slow death of French cheese

17 Feb 2020

Stoke, the city that Britain forgot

20 Nov 2019

Macron’s Brexit plan

10 Oct 2019

There’s no such thing as ‘the good old days’

06 Aug 2019

Why French farmers are plotting revolution

29 Jul 2019

How the gilets jaunes went up in flames

13 Jun 2019

Is this Marine’s moment?

21 May 2019

What does it mean to be French?

02 May 2019

Have the yellow jackets turned red?

28 Mar 2019

Macron’s cunning plan for Europe

07 Mar 2019

The 2019 Franco-Italian war

12 Feb 2019

How the gilets jaunes could save Macron’s skin

24 Jan 2019

Understanding the ‘gilets jaunes’

17 Dec 2018

Could the gilets jaunes topple Macron?

30 Nov 2018

What’s driving this French revolution?

19 Nov 2018

Is Macron’s Euro crusade doomed to fail?

08 Nov 2018

Marine Le Pen: a populist who will never win the popular vote

11 Oct 2018

Jean-Luc Mélenchon: a smarter Jeremy Corbyn

25 Sep 2018

Why rural France is fertile ground for Le Pen

14 Aug 2018

Could Macron prove more dangerous than Trump?

02 Aug 2018