The old joke is that France is a monarchy pretending to be a republic, while Britain is the other way round. It’s largely true. Certainly President Macron manages the sneer of cold command quite well, while our wishy-washy kindly King, tossed about by tides of fashion, perfectly embodies democratic dithering.
It is odd how displays of magnificence and majesty can so often weaken those who make them, just as attempts to be popular often end in mockery. As I watched the red and gold grandeur of Tuesday’s Windsor Castle dinner, I just thought it was tempting fate. How do they pick these guests? Is this the famous ‘soft power’ which we now claim to have? Are we saying, ‘Do not worry if our Army is a rump and our submarine nuclear deterrent is a barnacled antique whose missiles fall into the sea if launched. Fear not. We still have another type of superpower: Mick Jagger.’
I suppose the author of Under My Thumb, a song which could be performed by the Taliban without much embarrassment, is the perfect representation of modern British culture in so many ways. But what a fake the whole thing was.
You do not become grand by prancing about in your ancestors’ finery. You may take your grandfather’s gilded old sword down from the wall, and pose with it, but your weakling’s wrists, and hands unused to war, will not be able to wield it.
This sad event was followed by a quick paddle in political bilge by President Macron (still seething about our departure from the continental system known as the EU), and by our embarrassing Premier. Sir Keir must be starting to realise the grim irony of his decision to abandon the Rwanda scheme, under which illegal migrants would have been despatched to Africa. For behold, Britain has now become France’s Rwanda, a handy destination for migrants Paris does not want.
President Emmanuel Macron with King Charles at the banquet at Windsor Castle this week
The French do not even have to fly them here. They leave unstoppably of their own accord, and they are ushered ashore by the very authorities who in a normal country would be supposed to stop them. They do not complain about their accommodation or seek to return to the Fifth Republic.
Not that it does Paris much good. France has been only slightly less foolish than Britain in helping to provoke and stoke the wars which have brought about the greatest mass migration in human history.
France rightly stayed out of the Iraq madness. But since then it has joined every pea-brained conflict it can find, just like us. France was at our side in the stupid attack on Libya, which turned the Mediterranean, irreversibly, into a mass migration highway from Africa to Italy. France and Britain worked together to wreck Syria, again producing a giant flow of refugees.
This has transformed Britain and France in my lifetime, and is growing rather than dwindling. We could have avoided it at the start, but now have no idea what to do about it.
Yet there was one tough, resolute action in Paris while all this was going on. While President Macron was in England, Paris police raided the headquarters of the National Rally (RN) which, for all its many faults, is the main opposition party in France. They seized documents for what they claim was a probe into alleged illegal campaign financing (otherwise unknown in France, ha ha).
Jordan Bardella, the leader of France’s National Rally, denounced the police raid of the party’s headquarters as ‘a harassment campaign’. Peter Hitchens admits that he has a point
Sir Keir Starmer with Emmanuel Macron during the French President’s state visit. Sir Keir must be starting to realise the grim irony of his decision to abandon the Rwanda scheme, as Britain is now a handy destination for migrants Paris does not want, writes Peter Hitchens
The action was denounced by the party’s leader, Jordan Bardella, as ‘a harassment campaign’, and, whether you like him or not (I don’t) he has a point. Police raids on opposition parties always stink of repression.
The day before, EU financial prosecutors in Brussels announced an investigation into the alleged misuse of €4million (£3.7million) by the Identity & Democracy (ID) group in the European parliament, which once included the RN. And in Germany, Berlin’s MI5, the BfV, has classified that country’s fast-growing anti-immigration party, the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), as ‘anti-constitutional’ and ‘confirmed Right-wing extremist’. This means it is now legal for the German state to ‘observe’ AfD meetings, tap telephones and recruit informants. You’d think they’d be embarrassed, given recent history, but apparently not.
Well, I don’t much like the AfD, but here’s the thing. For nearly 30 years the liberal elites of Europe and North America have dismissed the genuine fears and discontents of the poor as ‘fascist’ or ‘racist’. They have permitted migration at levels not seen in recorded history. They have also debauched their economies and repeatedly started dangerous wars.
Their current obsession with stoking a war in Ukraine with money they have not got could just tip us all over the edge, into economic crisis and armed conflict well west of where it is now. It is not very surprising that millions have turned against the old consensus, or that nasty political groups have benefited from it.
Do the elite think they can stop this with police raids and surveillance? And what if they can’t? What future then for the whole of our continent?
It was nice while it lasted, but the strange death of Liberal Europe – which is in fact a suicide – does not look all that far off. Our descendants, viewing last week’s pseudo-grand events on scratchy old recordings, will think that we look like frivolous people dancing heedlessly on the lip of a volcano. For they will know what we can only guess – how all this will end.
