France

Chinese president Xi Jinping came to France and is taking home 300 Airbus jetliners, a large consignment of frozen chickens and a wind farm. A great triumph for France, declared Emmanuel Macron. And for Macron? Never mind that many of the planes will be built in China. Or that Airbus is no longer a French company but an international one, although headquartered in Toulouse. Or that the hens are unlikely to be free range. It’s hard to argue with a cheque for £30 billion. Or to stop a politician taking credit for a deal that’s been in the works for years. To cement his triumph, Macron hosts Xi today at

Back in December, Emmanuel Macron was a man on edge. His poll numbers were spiralling down the toilet; hundreds of thousands of French who felt alienated from their government were taking to the streets to shout down the French elite in cities and towns across the country; and fires were burning all around Paris. Police officers and protesters-turned-rioters were on the frontlines trading rocks and rubber bullets, resulting in hundreds (if not thousands) of arrests. Macron, the blue-eyed, fresh-faced technocratic politician who marketed himself during the 2017 presidential contest as the Fifth French Republic’s aspiring saviour, was left twiddling his thumbs in the presidential mansion wondering how to address the

Who needs the Comédie-Française when there is Emmanuel Macron in the Élysée? France’s recall last week of its ambassador from Italy for consultation was pure theatre on the part of the president. And it was a decision more for the benefit of his domestic audience than for the coalition government in Rome. In a statement explaining why Christian Masset had been ordered home, the foreign office said that for several months France has been subjected to outrageous statements that have created a ‘serious situation which is raising questions about the Italian government’s intentions towards France.’ France blamed the recall on Luigi Di Maio, the Italian deputy prime minster, who flew to

Patrick Jardin lost his daughter when Islamist terrorists attacked the Bataclan in November 2015. Nathalie was one of 130 people killed that evening in Paris and her father still pays her mobile phone charges so that he can hear her voice on her answer message. For Jardin, time has healed nothing. He spearheaded a successful campaign to prevent the controversial rapper Medine from appearing at the Bataclan last year. And in the interviews he gives, such as this one to Liberation, he directs his anger in many directions. Some of it against himself, for failing to “protect” his daughter, some against the killers, but most is channelled into a visceral loathing for

Emmanuel Macron spoke for three hours, almost without pause, at the first of his grand débats national in Normandy last week, in an attempt to respond to recent protests, while 8,000 policemen kept the gilets jaunes at bay. Yesterday, in the splendour of the Palace of Versailles, Macron hosted scores of international business leaders, many on their way to Davos, to reassure them that France was open for business. They were polite but it is fair to say sceptical, having seen on television the Porsches of bankers burning on the streets of Paris. Today the peripatetic president is with Angela Merkel in the German city of Aachen, known still to