One of the pleasures of spending the summer in France is that I can turn aside from our national problems and concentrate on those of our neighbour. They are similar but gratifyingly worse. You have to know someone quite well before they will open up about their own politics to a semi-outsider. I used to feel the same way when our own politics were chaotic in the aftermath of the EU referendum and French friends would approach me with that characteristic note of smug condescension to ask what on earth was going on.

Emmanuel Macron is the ablest President of France since Charles de Gaulle. Yet he is hated across the political spectrum. The young are especially venomous. I once delivered a series of lectures in France on the global response to the Covid pandemic. I was struck by the number

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