Europe

At first glance, for the visitor driving by, Guingamp in northwest Brittany looks idyllic. It is a typically lovely stone-built French small town, it has a sweet river running through the middle, it has pretty ramparts and a ducal chateau and riverbank gardens, with agreeable new fountains in the centre. It even has a decent-sized supermarket open on Sunday. In Guingamp, on a dead Sunday afternoon, I somehow felt more uneasy than I did in war-torn Ukraine At least it did last Sunday, the first French election day, when I paid a visit. The difference for me is that – unlike most trippers – I didn’t breeze on after a

This week France has drifted from surprise to confusion and panic as Sunday’s second round vote approaches. The bien-pensant centre-left weekly Nouvel Obs’ cover says it all. Black lettering on a red background menacingly warns: ‘Avoiding the Worst’; ‘The National Rally at the gates of power’. Yet the National Rally is an officially recognised legitimate mainstream party. France is not staring into the abyss. But if we were to indulge in such gloom-ridden musings what would be France’s post-electoral worst case scenarios. Let us begin gently. Marine Le Pen called this ‘an administrative coup d’etat’ In the event the National Rally cannot form a government on Monday, moves are already afoot by Macronist

Apart from Bob Dylan and Kazuo Ishiguro, it’s a fair bet that most people’s reaction to the Nobel prizewinners for literature this century is, who? Arguably the most recent, Jon Fosse, is an exception but the majority of winners don’t really stand up to the weight of the award. Annie Emaux? Abdulrazak Gurnah? Louise Gluck? It’s hard to avoid the impression that the judges were swayed by ethno-gender considerations rather than outright lifetime literary merit. I asked him about Albania obtaining European Union membership and he got tetchy This week there died, and today was buried, one man who really did merit the award for which he was nominated 15 times,

Life in the Berlaymont building, the Brussels headquarters of the European Union, just got a bit more surreal. A striking feature of the EU is its rotating presidency, under which the 27 member states take it in turns to do a six-month stint running its technically supreme political body, the European Council. This week, Hungary, the bad boy of Europe, took over the hot seat. It keeps it until the end of this year. The difficulty is that the government of Viktor Orbán in Budapest, albeit still popular at home, is at loggerheads with the EU. Politically, its scepticism over Ukraine’s war effort and its open dislike for liberal social

The builder who has been working on my house in Burgundy will be voting for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally on Sunday in the first round of the French parliamentary election. So will the electrician. I haven’t asked the plumber, but I suspect I know where his vote will go, given that his assistant is voting for Le Pen. My neighbour, a farmer, is voting Le Pen, as is a teacher acquaintance. The local policeman is also voting Le Pen. ‘What do I think of Macron?’ retorted the electrician. ‘Put it this way, he’s not my friend’ It’s not that surprising in this neck of the woods. The National Rally

Of the 20 or so opinion polls since France’s president Emmanuel Macron announced a snap election this month, the vast majority put Marine Le Pen’s right-wing party ahead. The Rassemblement National and its allies are predicted to get around 35 per cent of the vote, with the left-wing coalition Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) on 29 per cent and Macron’s centrist coalition Ensemble pour la République trailing on 20 per cent. Barring a black swan moment, Jordan Bardella’s RN will win the most seats in the chamber. But no one party is likely to have an absolute majority. Bardella announced on 18 June that, without a working majority, he will turn down the premiership, which he has

Has France’s far right just made a 180-degree turn on Ukraine? The leader of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, expressed his support for sending ‘ammunition and equipment [Ukraine] needs to hold the front’ at a recent arms fair. Last year, Bardella stated ‘the war would not end without a withdrawal of Russian troops and a return of complete and full sovereignty of Ukraine on the territories that are currently occupied by Russia’. Bardella, just like other figures on France’s nationalist right is hedging his bets. He is, for example, against sending ‘equipment that could have consequences of escalation in Eastern Europe’. Likewise, Marion Maréchal, the niece of Marine Le Pen, wishes for Ukraine’s victory but