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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: Political psycho-dramas, party in the port and Tricolore textbooks

From the latest political dramas (and what they say about a chaotic party) to French binge-drinking, parties and textbooks, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Published: 27 May 2023 08:08 CEST
Inside France: Political psycho-dramas, party in the port and Tricolore textbooks
La Rochelle's players celebrate their European Rugby Champions Cup victory during a parade in La Rochelle. Photo by ROMAIN PERROCHEAU / AFP

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Psycho-drama

After achieving almost two weeks of relative calm, the French government is involved in yet another political row, although this time most of the drama was created elsewhere. 

Approached behind the scenes and asked if they would consider supporting the government’s proposed immigration bill in parliament, the traditional centre-right Les Républicains party instead opted to launch their own immigration policy via the medium of an interview in the Journal du Dimanche. What they came up with would require changing the French constitution and possibly leaving the EU, and has been described as a “cut and paste from Marine Le Pen’s manifesto”.

It seems that the progress of the immigration bill is blocked for now, but this seems to be more about the internal psycho-dramas of the once-mighty Les Républicains (party of Sarkozy, Chirac and De Gaulle) than about the government’s truthfully fairly modest bill.

Heading for obscurity after securing less than five percent of the vote in the 2022 presidential election, the party gained a new lease of life as the potential power-broker in parliament after the government lost its overall majority. But can a party truly be a power-broken if it either cannot (as with pension reform) or will not (as with the immigration bill) deliver the votes? 

Party in the port

I’m severely jealous of anyone who was in La Rochelle last week as the entire town erupted into celebrations when their rugby team won the European rugby tournament for the second year in a row. 

The scenes from the Vieux Port on Saturday and during the team’s victory parade on Sunday looked like a lot of fun.

Le binge-drinking

Meanwhile, the French rugby league released this joke ‘sick note’ for fans who might have overdone it to present to their bosses on Monday. A handy template if you ever need to write a sick note, it also dispels that myth about the French always remaining moderate drinkers . . .

Tricolore

The below tweet will probably only make sense if you went to a British school in the 1980s and 90s . . .

We discuss the mighty Tricolore in the latest episode of Talking France, along with that immigration row, the great divide between car-free cities and car-dependent rural France, free Olympics tickets and the weird things that happen along the Franco-Spanish border. Listen here or on the link below. 

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: French lose the plot, sports stars speak out and Paris prices fall

From the latest on the increasingly crazy French elections to the powers of a president, the influence of sports stars and the lustre of the Olympics, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Published: 22 June 2024 10:54 CEST
Inside France: French lose the plot, sports stars speak out and Paris prices fall

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Losing the plot?

Welcome to another crazy week in French politics – I’m not saying that this election is getting to me, but the other night I dreamed I was having an argument with far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I think I need a holiday.

France might need a holiday too – the political discourse is getting increasingly wild, leading to our columnist John Lichfield to declare that the country has “taken leave of its senses”. 

Latest polling suggests that Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party would take the biggest vote share at 33 percent, followed by the increasingly fragile leftist coalition Nouveau Front Populaire with 29 percent and then Emmanuel Macron’s centrist group with 22 percent. Those figures would give none of the blocks an overall majority, instead leading to a total parliamentary deadlock.

French election breakdown: All the latest from the campaign trail

Earlier this week ‘Article 16 of the constitution’ was trending on French Twitter; this is the one that lays out the powers afforded to the president versus the prime minister, as people tried to work out what – if any – decisions Macron would be able to take in the final three years of his mandate.

READ ALSO: What does a French prime minister actually do

The satirical magazine Le Canard Enchâiné perhaps sums it up best in its cartoon, showing a man about to shoot himself in the head with a gun labelled ‘Rassemblement National’ and saying “We never tried this before”.

The Canard Enchainé’s cartoon as posted on Instagram

Sports stars engaged

On a more positive note, it’s been nice to see France’s biggest sports stars use their platforms to encourage people to vote, and speaking out against hatred and intolerance and in favour of diversity and inclusion.

I could not disagree more with the Spain goalkeeper Unai Simon, who criticised Kylian Mbappé’s call for people to vote against the far right, saying that footballers should “leave politics to other people”.

The whole point of living in a democracy is that politics belongs to everybody. As Mbappé said: “The Euros are very important in our careers, but first and foremost we are citizens and I don’t think we can be disconnected from the world around us.”

And I admit I’m biased about this – I’ve been a fan ever since I saw him make his professional debut at the age of 18 in my then-hometown of Castres – but I was also pleased to see French rugby legend Antoine Dupont taking a stand on another social issue, appearing on the front cover of LGBTQ magazine Têtu to decry homophobia (although the cover photo did rather make him look like he had forgotten his shades and was squinting into bright sunlight).

Talking France

We of course discuss all the election latest with John Lichfield in the latest episode of the Talking France podcast – and in what was perhaps linked to my need for a holiday we’re also discussing places to visit in France this summer.

Amid warnings of over-tourism we’re taking a look at the places predicted to be most crowded this summer – and suggesting some alternatives. Listen here or on the link below.

Fun and Games

It was thought that people might avoid Paris this summer – but the combination of good deals on the Olympic ticket resale site plus travel and accommodation costs dropping back to seasonal norms has seen a flurry of people booking a last-minute trip to the Games.

Personally I always thought the ‘everyone fleeing the capital’ narrative was a little over-played, but it’s been interesting to see that attempted price-gouging has also largely failed – at the start of the year there were Airbnb listings for frankly insane prices (I saw one that was €7,000 for two weeks), while now costs are largely at the summer average.

Paris travel deals to take advantage of as prices fall ahead of Olympics

Wrestling 

If you’re a Games fan I highly recommend the temporary exhibition at Paris’ Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration (a strong contender for the capital’s best museum, in my opinion) on the history of Olympics and their politics.

It also includes this statue which we’re told depicts ‘wrestling’ at the Olympics in antiquity. If you say so . . .

Photo: The Local

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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