In spite of these severe economic woes, the French political class is consumed by strategising and tactical manoeuvres, all tied to the possible fallout from the collapse of the Barnier government. It looks increasingly likely that Barnier will push through his budget using the famous Article 49:3 of the Constitution, which allows legislation to be passed without a parliamentary vote. The Left has said it would respond by seeking to bring down the government. The far-Right, whose votes will be decisive, has said that as things stand they are minded to vote with the Left. In which case, the Barnier government will collapse some time between 15 and 21 December.

In the last few days, the possibility of an even earlier move to bring Barnier down has been suggested — perhaps as early as next week. French public opinion is divided on the matter, though it seems surprisingly favourable to the prospect of a collapse. A recent poll found that just over half of those surveyed supported dissolution, despite the turbulence of the legislative elections over the summer. This number falls a little when the prospect of a financial crisis is evoked, but even then a hefty 46% still support a move against Barnier.

When the Barnier government was first put together, at the end of the summer, after an extended period of feverish uncertainty, it seemed as if it might signal some kind of return for the country’s centre-right Républicains. They were given some of the most powerful roles — the minister of interior, for instance — whilst Barnier himself came from this wing of the political spectrum. The Left cried foul, as they considered themselves the winners of the legislative elections, and yet the centre-right was back in power.

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However, it was always dangerous to rest the revival of a party and a political tradition on an edifice as fragile as the Barnier government. Less than six months later, we see that the fundamental dynamic of political fragmentation — where no political force is able to create a majority of any kind — is reasserting itself. And the Barnier government is a distillation of that fragmentation rather than a way of overcoming it.

This fragmentation has not come out of the blue. It was already evident in the early 2000s, but it was masked by the rallying effect that came from surprisingly good scores by the French far-Right. The fact that neither the Left nor the Right could command the same sort of vote share as in the past was hidden by the power of the cordon sanitaire: majorities were built on a fear of letting the far-Right into power.

This resistance to the far-Right has steadily fallen away, leaving the centre-right exposed and unable to secure its place in the presidential run-off. At the same time, the Left has split between the centre and the far-Left. Macronism, for a time, functioned as a broad centrist coalition, able to govern and thus seeming to reverse this trend of fragmentation. However, lacking any ideological consistency, this was only a temporary solution.

Today, with a shrunken Macronist party, the only thing keeping the Barnier government in place are the fears of his opponents about what exactly might happen should he be brought down. The far-Left, dominated by Jean Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, is determined to censure the government: it has never accepted its legitimacy in the first place. Though Mélenchon clearly relishes the prospect of a chaotic end to Barnier’s tenure as prime minister, there are others on the Left who are more cautious about what the voters will make of this parliamentary coup de grâce.

The same consideration lies on the far-Right. Marine Le Pen is unquestionably the one holding the cards at the moment. The Left can only bring Barnier down if they also have the support of the far-Right. Le Pen has up until now judged the government on a pragmatic basis, keeping her powder dry. The Rassemblement National has not managed to get over its own sense of betrayal in the legislative elections, when enough of the other parties united against it to keep it out of power. Moreover, it has not won any obvious battles in the debates on amendments to the budget. This week, Marine Le Pen declared that as things stand with the budget, she would also support a dissolution of the government. Even so, she is cautious about triggering an unnecessary crisis. She is also wary of being seen to play political games typical of the Parisian elite, games that appear unintelligible to her voting base.

There is no principled defence or critique of the Barnier government today in France. Current discussions and decisions are overwhelmingly tactical. Those eying up the presidency in 2027 — such as former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, and former leader of Les Républicains Laurent Wauquiez — are asking themselves whether a dissolved government will be good or bad for their chances. Both are watching events closely.

But despite this uncertainty, a full-blown crisis of the eurozone still seems far-fetched, given the broadly robust nature of the French economy. A sense of governability at the national level, however, is a key criterion for eurozone stability. And in France, the budget and the country’s future economic trajectory have become subordinated to political calculation. The government currently survives: but its existence is an expression of the indecision of others. And even though France has a government today, it remains no more governable than in the dramatic weeks after the dissolution of the legislature.

After losing the legislative elections, it seemed that Macron would be forced to nominate a Prime Minister from the Left. After all, the Left alliance, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), won 193 seats, compared with the 166 of Macron’s Ensemble, the 142 of the far-Right Rassemblement National (RN), and the mere 47 picked up by the centre-right Républicains (LR). Given the radical content of the NFP’s programme and how likely it would be to row back on Macron’s controversial pension reforms, a Left-wing Prime Minister would have been a difficult pill for the President to swallow.

By waiting until after the Olympics, and riding it out through the August sunshine, Macron was able to let the sense of electoral defeat dissipate. Capitalising on the divisions within the National Assembly, where no single party or group commanded a majority, Macron argued that he would only nominate a Prime Minister that would escape a vote of no confidence. The Left-wing candidate, Lucie Castets, was most likely to be voted down by her opponents, giving Macron a reason to refuse her appointment. Determined to find someone who would double-down on his legislative achievements, Macron turned towards the Right. His interest in Xavier Bertrand, however, was a red rag to the RN: Bertrand, as President of the Hauts de France region, has very often clashed with Marine Le Pen. She made it very clear to Macron that a Bertrand-led government would not last long. Barnier, by contrast, was far more amenable to the far Right. On 5 September, very quickly after his name appeared out of nowhere, Barnier was sworn in as Prime Minister.

Superficially at least, Macron has been able to shore up his own policies while also stealing the premiership from under the noses of the Left. The response within the NFP has been vitriolic. As one Le Monde headline put it, “The Left misses out on Matignon, the Parti Socialiste (PS) tears itself apart.” At issue here is the candidature of socialist heavyweight and former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. On 19 August, Macron telephoned Cazeneuve, after weeks of speculation about his possible nomination. Days later, at the PS’s summer conference, Cazeneuve was the subject of strong disagreements: the Left alliance remained committed to Castets, but others voiced their support for Cazeneuve and criticised Olivier Faure, the leader of the PS, for doggedly seeking an alliance with the far-left France Insoumise. By the beginning of September, it was clear that Cazeneuve did not have the support of his own party and Macron turned elsewhere.

Since then, Faure has been accused of torpedoing Cazeneuve’s nomination out of self-interest. The same has been said of former President, François Hollande, who is now back in Parliament as an MP. Neither Faure nor Hollande wanted a heavyweight Left-wing Prime Minister because it would detract from their own ambition to be at the centre of things. Macron’s move has thus provoked some blood-spilling within the Left alliance.

But Barnier’s nomination is symptomatic of a deep crisis not only on the Left but also within Macronism. The fact that the new Prime Minister is struggling to put a government together should not be surprising, and for at least three reasons.

The first is that Macron’s decision-making around the nomination was clearly oriented towards protecting his policies from being reversed by the Left. And this could only be guaranteed by a Right-wing Prime Minister — even the more moderate Cazeneuve gave indications that he might reverse some of Macron’s reforms. As a result, it is no longer possible to think of Macronism as an ideologically ecumenical — or post-ideological — movement, which is precisely what distinguished Macronism in its beginnings from its opponents. Macron explicitly sought to distance himself from the language of Left and Right and relied heavily on figures from both sides when putting together Prime Ministers and governments. Over the years, however, this has proven more and more difficult. The Left, in particular, has increasingly seen Macronism as just another term for the Right, and its politicians like Gérard Collomb, who used to support Macron, have refused to serve under him. Collomb, prominent within the PS, resigned as Minister of the Interior by the end of 2018. He’d had enough of the haughty and uncompromising manner of the young President.

The second reason is that Macron’s choice of Barnier is evidence that his own centrist political movement is giving way to a return of the centre-right in French politics. In their eyes, he stole an election, in 2017, which should have been won by their candidate, François Fillon. And he went on to steal their policies, most notably the cause of pension reform, as well as their politicians, such as Édouard Philippe and Rachida Dati. The result for the centre-right was catastrophic in electoral terms: while in 2017, Fillon was only fractionally behind Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election, five years later, their candidate, Valérie Pécresse, was unable to win even 5% of the vote. The nomination saga and the eventual choice of Barnier tells a different story. In order to avoid the Left, Macron has had to ally his movement to the centre-right in a way that has amplified the latter enormously. With only a relatively small number of deputies, the centre-right appears as if it will dominate the government. For some centre-right leaders, this all amounts to a slow take-over of Macronism, a reverse of what has occurred over the last seven years. It is for this exact reason that Gabriel Attal and Macron’s MPs in the National Assembly, are beginning to turn against Barnier, realising that they are unlikely to be appointed to any of the most important ministerial posts.

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The third reason is to do with Barnier himself. Whereas Attal was the youngest Prime Minister in the history of the Fifth Republic, and someone so close to Macron that he was referred to as “baby Macron”, Barnier is a politician unquestionably and unequivocally from the centre-right Gaullist tradition. He joined the Gaullist party, Union des Démocrates pour la République, in 1965 and remained a member through all of its incarnations from Chirac’s Rassemblement pour la République to LR today.

Barnier is a career politician of the old sort, one whose career spans the local politics of his native Savoie region and reaches all the way to seven ministerial positions starting in 1993, two appointments as European Commissioner and finally leading the EU-UK Brexit negotiations. Indeed, it is quite possible that Barnier is better known in the UK as the EU’s negotiator than he is in France. The contrast between Barnier and the sort of political figure that we associate with Macron’s En Marche movement could not be greater. His methodical and plodding approach, that leaves nothing to chance, is very far removed from Macron’s leadership style that relies heavily on instinct and a firm belief in his own brilliance. Barnier incarnates an older form of politics which Macron had promised to destroy but, in the end, seemed to resurrect.

By choosing Barnier, Macron might have unleashed conflict within the Left, but he has displayed his own desperation and heralded the steady collapse of his political movement. By the time the next presidential elections come around in 2027, there might be nothing left of Macronism at all.

But in an astonishing twist on Thursday, the Élysée announced that it had finally settled on the name of the new prime minister. And it was a familiar one: Michel Barnier, the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator. Macron had tasked him with forming “a unifying government in the service of the country”. On the face of it, this might seem like a long shot: Barnier is neither popular, nor even that well-known in France. His party, The Republicans, managed a mere 5% in the recent election. Having served four times as a government minister and twice as EU commissioner, Barnier, 73, long seen as a centrist, liberal-minded neo-Gaullist, is very much a representative of the establishment that voters have just rejected en masse. He’s known as the “French Joe Biden”. And yet this latest in a long line of political gambles for Macron may well prove to be a stroke of genius.

Only two months ago, Macron’s crushing defeat at the hands of Le Pen in the European elections had left him deeply delegitimised. He threw the dice and the subsequent French election succeeded in keeping Le Pen at bay — but in turn empowered a new Left-wing bloc comprising Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s left-populist party La France Insoumise, a sworn enemy of Macronisme. Macron was now squeezed between two foes on both Left and on the Right and institutional protocol, and basic democratic logic, dictated that he should appoint a prime minister from the New Popular Front — the coalition that won the most seats.

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This would have spelled disaster for Macron: the New Popular Front vowed, among other things, to repeal Macron’s flagship, but very controversial, pension reform law that raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. To ward off this scenario, the Macroniste bloc and the French establishment performed a remarkable pivot. Having successfully engaged the Left’s support in setting up a “republican front” to defeat Le Pen, it then turned that logic against the Left itself. The “dangerous radicals” who needed to be kept out of power now were no longer those on the “far Right” — but those on the “far Left”. Macron’s party immediately ruled out working with Mélenchon’s.

And so when the New Popular Front finally put forward a prime ministerial candidate — the not-particularly-radical Lucie Castets, a 37-year-old civil servant — Macron released a statement announcing that he was not going to appoint a prime minister from the Left-wing coalition because that they would not be in a position to govern with stability. A shocking denial of democracy, perhaps, but utterly consistent with the French president’s increasingly repressive techno-authoritarian rule, and his longstanding practice of exploiting the Left against the Right to his own benefit, while offering nothing in exchange.

Even though many voices from the NFP condemned the decision as a “disgrace” and an “unacceptable power grab”, Macron was always going to do whatever it took to safeguard his economic reforms and keep the Left out of power. He would readily disregard basic democratic principles to shore up his position — and even, it turns out, strike a deal with Le Pen.

Enter Barnier. Perhaps an unlikely candidate to help broker a deal between the Macroniste bloc and the Eurosceptic National Rally. In his role as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, he garnered a reputation for being for a radical pro-EU ideologue, who seemed more intent on “punishing” the UK for daring to leave than attempting to carve out a mutually beneficial relationship. His insistence on the EU’s red lines, particularly around the integrity of the single market and the Irish border issue, were seen by Brexiteers as obstructing the UK’s ability to achieve a satisfactory deal, and sharply discouraging for other member states who might have been contemplating similar exits.

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In recent years, however, Barnier has made a significant shift to the Right. During the 2022 campaign, as part of an unsuccessful attempt to become the presidential candidate against Macron, he assumed a hard anti-immigration line, claiming it was “out of control” and proposing a three-to-five-year moratorium on non-EU arrivals to France. He also said that France should regain its “legal sovereignty” and not be subject to the judgments of the EU courts. To many, this was little more than political opportunism: an attempt to whitewash his track record as an EU fanatic. His decision to prop up Macron, despite their short-lived rivalry, would appear to confirm this. Indeed, given his current positioning as a Right-leaning man of the establishment, he’s the perfect candidate for Macron’s latest political gamble: a de facto alliance between liberal-centrist forces and the National Rally against the Left.

While no official alliance is needed to approve the new prime minister — and Le Pen would of course never enter a formal agreement with Macron as it would amount to political suicide — the President wouldn’t have put forward Barnier’s name without having first squared it with Le Pen. He wouldn’t have risked the latter supporting a no-confidence motion against the proposed prime minister alongside the Left (which has already vowed to table a vote). Indeed, Le Pen has already signalled an openness to support the new government on individual policies. “Michel Barnier seems to meet at least the first criterion that we had requested, that is to say, someone who is respectful of the different political forces and capable of addressing the National Rally, which is the first party in the National Assembly”, she said.

It’s not hard to imagine what form the deal took: the new government will address some of the issues that National Rally considers priorities — first and foremost immigration — provided the RN doesn’t challenge Macron’s economic reforms and supports France’s Ukraine policy. There is no guarantee that the agreement holds, of course. But, it’s hard not to see this as a swingeing victory for Macron. In one fell swoop, he has marginalised the Left while absorbing the National Rally into the mainstream, forcing it to blunt its edges on economic and foreign policy issues — even potentially dampening support for the party, if it is seen as cosying up to the establishment. Not bad for someone who was considered politically dead just a few months ago.

Of course, it’s not a terrible outcome for Le Pen, who will be able to influence government policy on key issues. Given the pro-Macron bloc and the other centre-right parties don’t have an outright majority, Le Pen’s party holds a de facto veto over government policy. As one centrist lawmaker put it, Barnier’s fate will effectively “held by the National Rally”. And yet it’s hard not to see the establishment as the real winner here: in exchange for a compromise on immigration and security more broadly, Macron has succeeded in guaranteeing a degree of continuity to his agenda in terms of the overall direction of his economic and foreign policy — i.e., EU-dictated budgetary cuts and neoliberal structural reforms, and continued financial-military support for Ukraine under Nato’s banner.

This outcome was predicted back in 2018, when the French historian Emmanuel Todd put forward the concept of Macro-Lepenisme: a collusion between the forces of the state-financial aristocracy embodied by Macron and the authoritarianism implicitly associated with Le Pen’s political past. Todd suggested that even though Macron and Le Pen represent different ends of the political spectrum, their policies and actions actually revealed a deeper alignment. Both were seen by Todd as supporting a system that benefits the ruling class, particularly the wealthy and the powerful, at the expense of broader societal change. One of Todd’s central critiques is that both Macron and Le Pen exhibit authoritarian tendencies: for example, Le Pen expressed support for the French police’s often-brutal repression of the Gilets Jaunes protests. As this alliance comes into power, it is bound to have implications well beyond France.

In fact, this alliance between centrist-liberal and right-populist forces — a phenomenon that could be characterised as liberal-conservative populism — may soon become the blueprint for other European countries: stricter immigration policies and a cultural pushback against progressivism coupled with a relatively mainstream approach to economic and foreign policy within the EU-Nato framework. As said, one may view this as both a victory and a defeat for right-populism: a victory insofar as it will have succeeded in shifting policy in some areas, principally immigration and public safety; a defeat insofar as it will mean that right-populists will have failed to radically challenge the dominant economic-political order, and will have been reabsorbed into the establishment, as Le Pen in France.

The architecture of the EU itself plays a big role here: the degree of economic and financial control that Brussels exercises over member states, especially those that are part of the eurozone, means that even right-populist parties have little choice but to go along with the EU’s diktats. In this sense, Barnier’s cozy relationship with Brussels will likely be key, as he can be expected to work hand-in-hand with the EU on keeping France in line with the European agenda. It’s no coincidence that in his first statement he heralded a form of “green austerity” for France. As prime minister, people should expect him to “tell the truth, even if it’s difficult — the truth about debt, and the truth about environmental debt, which weighs heavy on the shoulders of our children”, he said.

But right-populist parties also share part of the responsibility: by framing the question of security almost exclusively in terms of stricter controls on immigration, rather than in broader terms of economic security, and refusing to recognise that the EU’s architecture sets structural impediments to real change, they are easy prey for co-option by the establishment. Macro-Lepenisme, it would appear, is here to stay.

The girls were well turned-out; many of them came from the kind of well-heeled or intellectual families once called “BCBG” — bon chic, bon genre — living in the western arrondissements of Paris. Others came from Neuilly-sur-Seine, the richest commune in France, just outside the city boundary (where Nicolas Sarkozy was once the mayor).

Whenever I see Valérie Pécresse I think of those walks. She has the same cheerful, determined, understated “BCBG” look. That is hardly a surprise; she was educated at that same convent school as my daughters.

The dual aim of Sainte-Marie de Neuilly is to turn out faithful and traditional Catholics girls but also tough, intelligent young women capable of competing with men in a men’s world. My non-French daughters hated it for the most part, but it educated them well.

Pécresse, 54, now stands at the entrance to a labyrinth which could lead her next year to win a competition which no French woman has ever won: to be President of the Republic. Last weekend, she became the first woman to be chosen as presidential candidate for the French centre-right, the political family of Charles de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Ten years ago ,that would have made her one of the favourites, even the favourite, to be the next President. But life is more complicated now — and it is growing more complicated by the day: part of the centre-right has emigrated to President Emmanuel Macron, while other sections have shifted to two far-Right candidates, Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour.

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Meanwhile, Pécresse — who has been President of the greater Paris region, Ile-de- France, since 2015 — is little known outside the Paris area; and Paris is not liked in the rest of France. Before she won a closed primary of the main centre-right party, Les Républicains, on Saturday she was running a poor 4th in the national opinion polls on 8 to 10% of support for the first round of the presidential election on 10 April.

But two post-primary polls in recent days have boosted her to 14% and 17% respectively. In other words, she is already pushing for a place, ahead of her two far-Right rivals, in the two-candidate second round on 24 April.

The election is, of course, still a long way away. Opinion polls bounces come and go. Just ask Eric Zemmour, who is sinking steadily after surging from 0% to 19% in the Autumn. The only exception to this rule seems to be President Macron, who continues to float serenely ahead of the pack on 23 to 25%.

All the same, Macron and his chieftains and supporters are worried. They are confident that the President would beat either Le Pen or Zemmour if they reached the second round. They are far less certain that he would beat Pécresse.

They know fully well that she appeals to a chunk of the electorate which dislikes Macron and would like a change, albeit not too much change. The prospect of a woman as President would, in itself, appeal to the perpetual French dissatisfaction with incumbents; there has been no female leader in France since the regent Marie de Médicis four centuries ago.

Pécresse, though more socially conservative and fiscally stringent than Macron, would also be more acceptable in a run-off to parts of the French Left — simply because she is not Macron.

But can she reach Round Two? Ultimately, in the first round, some of her advantages become handicaps.

A large part of the wider French Right and even her own party want radical change on crime, migration and Europe. Pécresse may be more socially conservative than Macron: she was once a leading figure in a movement to try to block gay marriage, though she now accepts “marriage for all” should not be challenged. But the French Right regard Pécresse, correctly, as a continuation of the centrist consensus which has survived, with a few twists and turns, from Chirac through Sarkozy, François Hollande and Macron.

And unlike Le Pen and Zemmour, Pécresse is a typical product of the French political elite. After jumping two classes at Sainte-Marie-de-Neuilly and gaining the top mark in the baccalauréat at the age of 16, she went to a leading business school and to the elite civil service college Ecole Nationale d’Adminisration (ENA). She then taught at the leading political school, Science-Po. She is pro-European and pro-business. She is married to an engineer-turned-senior-businessman and has three children.

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As a result, the response by harder-line Républicains or by Zemmouristes to her victory at the weekend was brutal. They called her a “girouette” (weather-vane), “Valérie Princesse”, “Valérie Traitresse” and “Macron in a skirt”.

Perhaps anticipating this, Pécresse promised in her acceptance speech to be a new kind of President: one who would break with the past and keep promises. She also emphasised that, unlike Le Pen and Zemmour, she was capable of winning on 24 April and “turning the page on Macron”.

In truth, she will struggle in the next four months to keep her own party together, let alone unite the wider French Right. Even her acceptance speech was publicly criticised by the man she crushed 61-39% in the second round of Les Républicains’ primary.

Eric Ciotti, who represents Nice in the French national assembly, is closer in most respects to the views of Zemmour and Le Pen on Islam and migration than those of Pécresse. He complained that her victory oration omitted his most eye-catching proposal: a French Guantanamo for suspected Islamist radicals and an end to the “droit du sol” — the right to French citizenship of anyone born on French soil.

In response, Pécresse again rejected both those ideas but promised that Ciotti would be a big part of her campaign; her first visit was to his village in the mountains above Nice. It was a shrewd move and her political skills should certainly not be underestimated. Pécresse says she is “two parts Angela Merkel and one part Margaret Thatcher”. She is not, she says, une dame de fer (iron lady) like Thatcher but une dame de faire (a woman who gets things done).

Yes, she was given little chance by pundits (including this one) of winning the five-candidate primary last week. But she proved herself with talent and cunning.

The number of Les Républicains party members zoomed from 80,000 to 140,000 in the weeks before the vote as “sympathisers” handed over €30 in annual party dues. All five candidates had encouraged supporters, in effect, to buy votes. The Pécresse camp, with the enormous population of greater Paris behind it, “bought” the most (quite legally). And it undoubtedly had an impact: she beat the favourite, the former EU Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, by only 1,200 votes in Round One to go forward in second place to round two.

Yet there were other factors, too. In the four televised primary debates, Barnier looked tired and grouchy; Ciotti slick and passionate. Pécresse, meanwhile, was calm, fluent and well-drilled. She appealed to the party’s hard Right wing by proposing two constitutional changes to make it easier for France to block migration and deal with radical Islam. She shone like a beacon in a deep pink jacket among the shiny dark suits.

But now comes the real campaign. And this is where her troubles could begin.

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One way to look at this election is that France, like Gaul under Julius Caesar, has been divided into three parts. The Left — remember them? — still commands just under 30% of the votes. They are divided, irretrievably it appears, between seven different candidates: two Trotskyists, a Communist, two Socialists, a Green and the hard-left nationalist, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. None, at present, has more than 11% of the vote. They are unlikely to get near the top four, never mind the top two, in the first round.

There is then a wide band of pro-European, pro-business, centre and centre-right — in effect politics as usual — candidates, taking in Macron but also Pécresse. They have maybe 30% to 40% support.

Finally, there is a chunk of just over 30% of far-Right and hard-Right voters who want to turn everything on its head. They are anti-European, ultra-nationalist and anti-migrant. They detest what they see as a Left-tinged media consensus against strong action to reduce European power, end migration, tackle crime and shackle Islam (not just radical Islamism). They include the supporters of Le Pen and Zemmour, but also a big slice of members and voters of Les Républicains — two-fifths of them judging by the result of last Saturday’s primary.

Eric Ciotti has said that, faced with a choice between Macron and Zemmour in Round Two, he would vote for Zemmour. Yet in 2017, Pécresse voted for Macron rather than Le Pen. She left Les Républicains two years later because she said they were drifting towards the far-Right, and only rejoined just before the primary. In other words, she and Ciotti are in the same party but not in the same ideological “third” of France.

To win next April, then, Pécresse has to persuade many hard-Right and far-Right voters to take another chance on a mainstream politician who says that she shares their anger and fears. She needs, above all, the Zemmour bubble to burst, but not to burst too much; she needs his supporters who have abandoned Le Pen to stay with him. Otherwise, Le Pen will return to an unassailable first round position, just behind Macron.

At the same time, Pécresse needs to reclaim some of the moderate, pro-European centre-right voters who now support the President. That will be difficult if she is also to make a full-blooded pitch to the Ciotti-Zemmour-Le Pen third of France.

Her BCBG cheerful toughness will appeal to some voters. It will enrage others. If she can find a way to balance all those things — and that is a big ask — the race for second place in the first round on 10 April could be a three-way tie until the finishing line. It could be decided by just a handful of votes. If Pécresse has those votes, she could beat Macron two weeks later.

What would that change in France? Not much. Pécresse would bring a change of style. She would be marginally tougher than Macron on migration. She would be less ambitious about France’s role in Europe and Europe’s role in the world.

But the fundamentals would change little. The deep political divisions in France would persist; they might even deepen. The real battle for the soul of France is coming — but probably not until 2027.

But in the case of Emmanuel Macron, it’s something rather different. He’s been changing the colour of the French flag without telling anyone about it. Or perhaps we just didn’t notice. Either way, it’s definitely happening. One by one, government buildings are taking down their flags and replacing them with a modified Tricolore. The red is slightly deeper and the blue distinctly darker. 

Throughout modern history, autocratic leaders have taken it upon themselves to change the national flag. We don’t have to go back to the Thirties and you-know-who for an example. For instance, in 1995, Alexander Lukashenko changed the white-red-white flag of Belarus to a design based on the Communist-era flag of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The change was more than cosmetic. Lukashenko has ruled his country in the Soviet style ever since. 

Emmanuel Macron is also returning to a — literally — darker past. His preferred version of the French flag goes all the way back to the 18th century and the birth of the French Republic. It was Jacques-Louis David — pre-eminent artist of the Revolution — who created the definitive Tricolore in 1794. 

So what is Macron up to? Why would a busy world leader spend his time fussing over his country’s national symbols? Could it be that Monsieur Europe is in fact a “flagshagger”?

British users of Twitter will be familiar with this indelicate epithet. It’s an insult directed by die-hard Remainers against their Brexiteer opponents. The not-so-subtle implication is that anyone who makes a point of flying our national flag must love it rather too much. 

It’s all part of a wider — and oddly British — tendency. Almost uniquely in the world, a significant slice of progressive opinion in this country regards the open display of national symbols as divisive. Just look at the abuse that Keir Starmer got from his own side when he appeared alongside a strategically-placed Union Jack. 

Where on Earth did we get the idea that we should be embarrassed by our own flag? Perhaps from the Germans. A key moment came in 2013, when Angela Merkel took a German flag (the black, red and gold one) from a colleague at a campaign rally. But rather than wave it, she rushed to get rid of it — a look of disgust on her face. No flagshagging for her. 

The clip still does the rounds on social media — usually to make the point that the leaders of the European Union, unlike their brutish British counterparts, have left nationalism in the past where it belongs. However, that’s not the whole story. Four years later — and faced with an electoral challenge from the hard Right — Merkel too was wrapping herself in the flag. Today, finding himself in a similar situation, Macron is doing the same.

Unofficially, the three colours of the French flag correspond to the three words of the national motto: liberté, egalité, fraternité. In this age of lockdowns, some might interpret the darkening of the blue as the dimming of liberty. Certainly, it accords with a shift in the national mood. It was only in April that a thousand French servicemen and women — including 20 retired generals — signed a letter attacking the government and warning of civil war. Ominously, the letter was published on the 60th anniversary of the 1961 Algiers Putsch — a failed military coup.

Furthermore — and this bears repetition until it ceases to be true — Macron’s main challengers for the Presidency are Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, both of whom are candidates of the far Right. Is it a mere coincidence that the colours used in Macron’s version of the Tricolore match those used in the logo of Le Pen’s political party? It seems more likely that Macron is moving to reclaim the mantle of French nationalism. 

It’s worth remembering where the outgoing version of the French flag came from. The key decision was made in 1976 by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. For his time, Giscard was a modernising president. His reforms included symbolic changes. For instance, he slowed down the rhythm of the Marseillaise — the national anthem — to make it less aggressive. As for the national flag, he brightened it up. In particular, the blue was changed to match the shade used in the European flag. 

The two flags fly side-by-side just about everywhere in France. Thanks to Giscard’s innovation, they harmonise seamlessly. It’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins — a visual representation of how the French state has traditionally viewed the European Union. 

However, France is coming to realise that the EU is less of an extension of French sovereignty and more of a threat to it. Eurosceptic postures are no longer confined to the far Right, but have been adopted by mainstream politicians like Michel Barnier. This puts Macron in a delicate position. With Angela Merkel about to step down as German Chancellor, he must fancy himself as Europe’s biggest cheese. However, he’s still got an election to win at home against Rightist opposition — and thus he needs to assert French sovereignty, but without upsetting Brussels.

Symbolically, this is exactly what his changes to the flag achieve. By replacing the Reflex Blue in Giscard’s colour scheme with the older, darker blue, the Tricolore no longer merges into the EU flag. It may be a distinction that makes no practical difference, but it sends a signal. 

Am I reading too much into this? Can we really imagine that a liberal rationalist and pro-European like Emmanuel Macron actually cares about a mere national symbol? Absolutely, we can. 

Back in 2018, he made an official visit to the Mont Valerien fort near Paris — a site sacred to the memory of members of the French resistance. Greeting the waiting crowd, the President was affronted when a cheeky teenager asked him “how’s it going, Manu?” Instead of ignoring the young man, Macron told him off: “You’re here, at an official ceremony and you should behave. You can play the fool but today it’s the Marseillaise, the Chant des Partisans, so you call me ‘Mister President’ or ‘sir’.”

Was this just amour-propre — self-love — on the part of a prickly politician? Not on this occasion. In referring the national anthem and to a patriotic song of the Resistance, Macron wasn’t thinking of his own ego but the dignity of his office and its symbolic importance to the nation. 

I’d be amazed if he accorded any less respect to his country’s flag. He hasn’t changed its colours because out of some trivial preference for one shade of blue over another. He’ll have thought long and hard about the deeper meanings.

Flags as we know them today are descended from the battlefield heraldry of the Middle Ages. But whereas a coat of arms is an exclusive possession — a privilege granted to the high and mighty — a flag belongs to an entire people. Contrary to the progressive critique, national flags are symbols of inclusion, of democracy in its fullest sense. While they mark borders in space, they signify continuity through time — an inheritance to be handed down from generation to generation. 

Giscard was therefore wrong to break with tradition and Macron is right to restore the Tricolore to its former glory. Let’s see who salutes.

It was summed up by a book on prominent display in a local library: Fifty Reasons to Hate the French. Why not “Fifty reasons to hate the… Germans”? Too crass. The Irish, Scots or Welsh? Too divisive. Just about anybody else? Too racist. These days the list of socially-acceptable bigotries is thankfully short, but the French are still on it.

It’s not entirely without provocation. In 2021 alone, the French have threatened to blockade British trade, punish us for Brexit, cut off our energy supplies and divert exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine (despite casting doubt on its effectiveness). This is tinpot Putinism, not fitting behaviour on the part of a friend and ally. 

The attitude of the French government — and of President Macron in particular — is perfectly summed up by the expression mal élevé. Meaning “badly brought-up” or “ill-mannered”, it also conveys a sense of entitlement, pushiness and preening self-regard. Which isn’t to say the British side is blameless. It’s obvious that our Prime Minister enjoys annoying the French. In his speech to party conference, Boris gleefully referenced the “raucous squawkus” over Aukus. But the French weren’t laughing. The security pact between the Australians, the UK and the US not only killed off a major defence deal with Canberra, but rubbed salt into the open wound of perceived Anglo-Saxon arrogance. 

So while the temptation to wind-up a self-important popinjay like Macron may seem irresistible, Johnson must restrain himself. The trouble with humourless people is that they don’t get the joke — especially when it touches upon matters of national sensitivity. France was humiliated by Aukus and there’s been no meaningful gesture to make things right — least of all from Boris Johnson. But that’s symptomatic of the Anglo-French relationship in general. Neither country is even trying to understand the other. That has to change. It’s time for a new Entente Cordiale. 

The original pact dates from 1904 when the British realised that they didn’t have any European allies and the French that they had enough to worry about with the Germans. Entente cordiale can be translated as the “cordial agreement” — but entente also means “understanding”.  In 1911, the British diplomat Eyre Crowe noted that the alliance wasn’t really an alliance, but “nothing more than a frame of mind, a view of general policy which is shared by the governments of two countries, but which may be so vague as to lose all content”. And yet there is something profound in trying to see the world from another’s perspective — especially when the two parties are as dissimilar as Britain and France. 

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How Britain betrayed Macron

By John Lichfield

Beyond the outward divergences in language and culture, it’s hard to define the essential difference between the two nations. It is easier to feel than describe. But if I had to put it into words — in fact, one word — it would be tristesse. France, for all her enjoyment of the earthly pleasures, is a sad country.

The last time I visited my mother’s home town of Bar-le-Duc, in Lorraine, I happened upon a long-disused train station. Unconnected to the mainline from Paris, the reason for its existence was a mystery to me. But then I found out: the station served a single-track line that once carried French soldiers to the front at Verdun. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The past lies heavily on France in a way it just doesn’t in England. The Republic’s borders are bloodstained, their violation a trauma to successive generations. Such differences in experience have shaped the character of the two nations, their sense of place and destiny. Which is why the Entente Cordiale — the conscious effort to “share an outlook upon the world” — was in some ways more ambitious than a mere alliance. 

For a while, the effort bore fruit. Through two World Wars, the neighbours stood together against tyranny. Even when France fell in 1940, the government of Free France continued the struggle from its headquarters in London. The relationship was not an easy one, of course. Sir Edward Spears — Churchill’s envoy to the Free French — once remarked that the “heaviest cross I have ever had to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.” 

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Why Britain needs a De Gaulle

By Peter Franklin

And yet, for all the tension, the respect between the allies ran deep. Churchill called De Gaulle “the saviour of France” And, on his death, De Gaulle said this of Churchill: “in the great drama he was the greatest of all”.

So how did we descend from the Entente and the World Wars to the sausage and fish wars of the present day? Well, there’s only one answer to what went wrong between Britain and France — and that is Germany. 

It’s been said many times that the Germans lost the war, but won the peace. What they won in particular, though, was the French. This was the new partnership at the heart of Europe. Piece-by-piece, what became the European Union was built around a Franco-German axis, in the shadow of which the Anglo-French relationship withered away. The Single Currency was the final straw. The EU became a project alien to British concerns — and Brexit became inevitable.

Given their history, the French choice of Germany over Britain was also inevitable. From the point at which the Germans offered cooperation in place of strife, it was the only way for France to go. A new Entente needs to start by accepting the course of events. The tides of history have carried Britain to a future outside of the EU and France to a future within it. Each country must wish the other bon voyage. 

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By Peter Franklin

For the French that means repudiating the Juncker doctrine i.e. “Brexit cannot be a success.” Far from being the first to make trouble whenever a dispute arises between the UK and EU, Paris should serve as mediator not antagonist. Indeed, it should strive not just for a frictionless border on the island of Ireland — but across the Channel too.

In return, the UK must recognise that France has global interests beyond the borders of Europe — and beyond the capacity of the EU to provide for. The British government should work towards the fullest possible inclusion of France within its security alliances. Aukus should become Fraukus and the Five Eyes should become Six. We must resist any slide into Anglo-Saxon chauvinism or any return to US-led adventurism. 

The Channel is a narrow stretch of water, but also the meeting point between the two halves of the western world: the English-speaking nations and continental Europe. It is up to the British and the French whether it becomes a fault line or the glue that holds the West together. In a world where the enemies of freedom are again becoming stronger, the Anglo-French relationship is of more than local significance.

Way back on day two of those negotiations, a photo opportunity was staged around the negotiating table: there was Barnier with his team, each holding a thick sheaf of briefing papers; opposite him was David Davis, literally empty-handed. The symbolism was painfully obvious. Even those of us who supported Brexit were appalled.

But they say if you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by. Four years on, Brexit is done — and so is Barnier. After the Brexit gig, he had his eye on the Presidency of the European Commission, but was beaten to it by von der Leyen. Now, he is having to run for President of France, a regrettably democratic process. He’s already floundering.

One of many possible candidates for Les Républicains — the biggest French conservative party — Barnier is by no means the favourite. To stand out from the pack, he has tried to strike a Eurosceptic note. He has called for a three-to-five year freeze on immigration into the EU; changes to the Schengen Agreement on movement of people within the EU; an assertion of French national sovereignty against European courts; and, best of all, a referendum to provide a “constitutional shield” against EU interference.

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By MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ

Of course, it won’t work. Mr Europe doesn’t get to play Eurosceptic and retain his credibility. And even if his flabbergasting hypocrisy were to win him his party’s nomination, what would it be for? No centre-Right candidate — from the frontrunners such as Xavier Bertrand to the also-rans such as Barnier — comes close to matching the first-round support of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

The last Presidential election, in 2017, was the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic that a candidate of the centre-Right failed to make it through to the second round. In 2022, the best that the French conservatives can hope for is that Le Pen loses enough votes to a rival populist — most likely the polemicist Éric Zemmour — to let their candidate through. But not only is this a long shot, it’s a humiliation. The centre-Right — the inheritors of Charles de Gaulle — shouldn’t have to depend on the in-fighting of the radical Right.

Michel Barnier is not only an embarrassment to his party, then, but also a symbol of its impotence.

Yet British Tories shouldn’t take too pleasure from his downfall. What’s happening to the centre-Right in France is happening across the West. We have become so used to hearing about the decline of the traditional parties of the centre-Left that we have failed to notice the rot setting in on the centre-Right too. Conservatism is in crisis.

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Is it the Tories who are doomed?

By Ed West

On Monday, Norwegian voters went to polls — and kicked out the ruling centre-Right coalition after eight years. Later this month, German voters are likely to bid farewell to the Christian Democrats after 16 years. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia — the governing party as recently as 2011 — is now a mere appendage to the populist Right. In the Netherlands, the once dominant Christian Democrats are in deep trouble, their support bleeding away in all directions — including the Farmers’ Party which is now ahead of them in the polls. And finally, in the Republic of Ireland, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael — both vaguely conservative — once commanded over 80% of the vote between them. But their joint share is now only half that — and Sinn Fein is the largest party.

It’s not just Europe. In Australia, Labor have opened up a big lead over the Liberal-led coalition government. In New Zealand, the Nationals, who won 44% of the vote as recently as 2017, now languish in opposition on a poll rating of about 25%. And then there’s America — whose two-party system ought to mean that the main party of the Right can’t fall too far. And yet the Republicans have only won the popular vote once in the last eight Presidential elections.

Of course, there are exceptions to the general trend — Spain, for instance; and, until recently, England — but the bigger picture looks dire for the centre-Right.

It’s not that the centre-Left is back, exactly: in Norway the big winners were the parties of hard Left and the agrarian Centre Party. In Germany, the Social Democrats will enjoy gains — but only because their conservative and Green opponents made catastrophically bad leadership choices. In France, the socialists are even less likely to win the presidency than the conservatives. And in Canada, voters would dearly love to see the back of Justin Trudeau. But the Conservatives are unable to unite Canadians behind them. The latest polls show them stuck in the low thirties.

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Conservatives need multiculturalism

By Blake Smith

Looking at the decline of the mainstream parties of the centre-Left, it’s easy to identify one over-riding cause: the demographic decline and political alienation of the traditional working class. But for the mainstream parties of the centre-Right, the causes are more complicated and country-specific — the sudden rise of Emmanuel Macron in France, for instance, or the rapid decline of religiosity in the Republic of Ireland. Still, beyond these local factors, there are two threads that are common to the international crisis of conservatism.

The first is reform — or rather the lack of it. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, many pundits expected electorates to turn sharply leftwards. That didn’t generally happen. Instead, the immediate demand was for security — and for that voters generally look to the conservative Right.

Something similar happened during the Seventies. A decade of constant crisis paved the way for the decade of Thatcher and Reagan. But there’s a crucial difference between the Eighties and the 2010s. For good or ill, the Eighties brought change — there was a new paradigm for economics (neoliberalism) and for international relations (the end of the Cold War).

The same can’t be said for the 2010s, during which very little changed. There was no new era of capitalism, just the same model of globalisation plus a few sticking plasters. The only real exception anywhere in the West was Brexit — which no government actually wanted to happen.

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The second thing that has gone wrong is that, in place of reform, conservative parties have offered something emptier: the politics of sensation. Instead of working quietly and cautiously towards change, conservatives now offer the feeling of change.

For instance, there’s never been a more performative presidency than that of Donald Trump. Even though he achieved very little in the way of concrete reform, he gave the impression that a revolution was underway — ably assisted by the outrage of his enemies. He even tried to perform his way to winning an election he had just lost.

Of course, Trump is proof that performance can only get you so far — if unsupported by underlying reality. And this is why Michel Barnier’s performative Euroscepticism won’t get him very far. Everyone knows that within the unreconstructed framework of the European Union, the policies he’s proposing are pointless.

There’s an obvious lesson here for Boris Johnson. Though he’s delivered Brexit, he now has to deliver all the other things he said would happen after Brexit. He can’t just promise to control our borders, our borders must be controlled. He can’t just talk about “building back better”, he must build better things. He can’t just sell the feeling of “levelling up”, he must actually narrow the gap between North and South.

If he doesn’t then he’ll find himself going the same way as poor Michel.

Predictably, it all started with a letter. Published in Valeurs Actuelles last month and signed by around 1,000 servicemen and women, including 20 retired Generals, it warned President Macron that Islamist extremists, and the existence of the banlieue ghettos, have the potential to tip France into civil war.

The contents of the letter were disturbing. But so was the timing, coming as it did on the 60^th anniversary of the failed generals’ putsch of 1961, when generals of the French Army attempted to topple President Charles de Gaulle. Indeed, it’s hardly surprising that it sparked an extraordinary scandal, with government ministers threatening to punish all the letter’s signatories.

Undaunted by these threats, the warning was repeated this week in a second letter, this time signed by 130,000 members of the French public. Once again the French government condemned it. Elsewhere, their reception has fallen along predictable political lines: mainstream politicians of the Left and Right have criticised the letters, while Marine le Pen has been careful to express support for the signatories.

This is, of course, to be expected. Le Pen will seize on whatever embarrasses the rest of the political mainstream, while the rest of that mainstream will continue to resist anything which could be seen to provide ammunition for Le Pen.

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But it is really the longer-term effect of interventions like these that are of most interest. Because what is striking about the debate on immigration, integration and security in France in recent years is not that the same lines keep getting drawn. The interesting thing is that, while this has gone on, French politics has experienced a silent revolution. Indeed, things are today said in France on immigration that would normally end a political career in most English-speaking countries.

The most high-profile demonstration in recent weeks came in the form of Michel Barnier. The Frenchman turned 70 in January, a milestone which precludes him from taking up another job in the European Commission. And perhaps as a result, he is now eyeing up a run for the French Presidency.

How do we know this? Because in an interview on Sunday, Barnier dropped this bombshell:

“There are links between [immigration flows] and terrorist networks which try to infiltrate them… There is a risk of an explosion, particularly on the topic of immigration. We need to introduce a moratorium on immigration. We need to take time to evaluate, check and if necessary, change our immigration policies.”

In this and later interviews the same day, he speculated that France should consider a total suspension of immigration for between three and five years, as well as a reassessment of free movement within the Schengen area. In other words, it is time for France to take back control. Suddenly, external migration and internal movement in the EU are now up for debate in the political centre.

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There are several interesting things to note about this. The first is the way in which the events of the last year have already shifted the debate on immigration and border control more than anyone might have expected. For more than a generation, governments in the developed West have argued that high levels of immigration into Western countries are a fact of life; migration cannot be stopped altogether even if the governments of the developed countries wanted to do so.

But the events of the last year have shown this to be a lie. In an extreme event — on this occasion a global pandemic — countries around the world have shown that they are able to close their borders. Even Justin Trudeau’s Canada and Angela Merkel’s Germany, which have made a great show in recent years of being open to migration from around the world, did something that nobody could ever (before the pandemic) have expected them to do: they shut the borders and kept them shut.

The public and some wilier politicians will have noticed something here. If it is possible to close the borders to prevent a pandemic, then it should be possible to close the borders to prevent excessive migration. Whether you agree with the policy or not, it has suddenly become a viable option.

The only discussion, then, is whether a particular set of circumstances is serious enough for a pandemic border response to be enacted. Clearly there are many in France who think they are at this point. And that raises an important question over what is a more serious challenge to the long-term security of France: the Covid pandemic or the ongoing divisions and security concerns brought on by high levels of immigration?

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The EU always fails

By Douglas Murray

If you go to parts of Paris — even in the city centre — there are migrant tent communities set up that resemble somewhere in the third world, or California. As long as they exist, it is surely understandable for Parisians to wonder why this problem can’t be fixed.

Their Government has shown that it can mandate everyone to stay in their homes, lock the borders and force everyone to wear masks. Why can it not deal with the issue of mass migration? Clearly the thought is out there. Otherwise Mr Barnier would not have taken — utterly cynically, no doubt — up the cause.

And yet it is not just Covid that has changed things. Rather, as I described in The Strange Death of Europe, public opinion in France on immigration has long been shifting in this direction. Very few people, year on year, say that they are less concerned about integration; and very few believe that multicultural France has a happy future if migration continues at the rate of recent years.

Politicians of the Left as well as the Right have long been facing up to this. But the Barnier intervention — like that of the generals — is a demonstration that the political reality, as well as the political rhetoric, in France is changing. Things that were once unthinkable are now being proposed as national policy. No doubt that will all come as a shock to Mr Barnier’s former colleagues, but they would be unwise to ignore it.

It was home sickness, and there wasn’t a pill for that. I was already many miles from home and about to be ‘dropped off’ — as the phrase goes — at boarding school. Even today, nearly half a century on, that passage of road makes me feel physically ill.

Within the school gates, home sickness was generally regarded as a sign of weakness; a sickly condition that affected boys of a more delicate constitution. So, as a child, I learnt to hide it. It would upset my mother too much if she knew how much I missed my bedroom, my toys, my little comforts, my family. And it would mark me out as weedy and fragile. I think all the boys hid it one way or another. Better just get on and make the best of it. Man up!

My wife left her home, Israel, after the army, to go to university in the UK. And she stayed. She found a job, got married, had children, and made a life for herself a long way from her home. Like many immigrants, she learnt not to speak too much of homesickness. It was regarded by some as a sign of disloyalty to the place in which she chose to settle. “If you miss it so much, why don’t you go back?” Migrants are told to integrate, to put the old behind them. Get on and make the best of it. Homesickness is a condition that dare not speak its name.

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The insidious racism of the Left

By Giles Fraser

But it wasn’t always thus. Not that I made the connection back then, but the classical texts we were reading at school often articulated precisely the sort of longing that we were all being trained to supress. Odysseus’s ten-year journey back to Ithaca, Ovid’s poems from exile, they all carry a deep yearning for the familiar patterns of home. And the Bible itself, the core text of my pathologically Christian school, is saturated with the same desire. “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.” Such sentiments stayed with the Jewish people throughout nearly two thousand years of exile.

For the past two months, I have been living in Tel Aviv, learning a new language, learning new ways. And perhaps because of the evident joy and pride of so many here, living once again in their historic homeland, my own yearning for home has started to bubble up. Tea, bath, a proper bacon sandwich, irony, church spires, soft grass — the list is my own, but one that may not be wholly unfamiliar to those who have gone to live abroad. I love Israel. But I have started to miss my home.

So when and why did homesickness become a feeling that is now ever so slightly looked down upon, suspected, discredited? Consider the way in which the word “nostalgia” is used in current political debates around Brexit. Brexit is driven by nostalgia, argues Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, and “nostalgia serves no purpose.” Likewise the historian Max Hastings argues that Brexit is motivated by a “crazy nostalgia”. There are hundreds of examples like these. As Freddie Sayers puts it in his latest Post “Nostalgia has become one of the taboos of our political age.”

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Why can't we talk about Brexit?

By Giles Fraser

Ok, the word nostalgia has developed a slightly different nuance to that of homesickness, but they are strongly connected — the word being a combination of the Greek word “nostos” meaning “homecoming”, and “algos” signifying suffering or grief. And the term nostalgia was coined in the late 17th century by the physician Johannes Hofer to describe a condition that was said to have particularly affected Swiss soldiers on manoeuvres abroad. As Krystine Batcho writes in her study of nostalgia for the American Psychological Association: “Much of the early interest in nostalgia was motivated by the concern for optimal performance of military resources during European conflicts.”

How, though, could a feeling that was so valued by ancient texts as something noble have come to be so delegitimised — and with Hofer, medicalised — at the advent of modernity.

Susan Matt, in her fascinating history, Homesickness: An American History, recounts the story of the journalist Katherine Lanpher, who in 2004 moved from Minnesota to New York City. Feeling homesick, she decided to cheer herself up with a manicure. Lanpher tells the Korean woman who is working on her nails how she is feeling. The manicurist, though herself far from home, is totally unsympathetic: “Don’t be big baby!” she responded.

Now you could read this as the nail bar woman challenging a wealthy white woman to check her privilege. Nonetheless, “Don’t be big baby!” has become the characteristic attitude of modern life to the feeling of homesickness. It developed, according to Matt, because homesickness was regarded as a threat to the well-being of those who travelled far from home, especially those who left home in search of work or in order to fight for their country.

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Our modern parenting is making monsters

By Giles Fraser

Homesickness was re-described as something backward looking. It didn’t cohere with the philosophy of rugged individualism characteristic of the pioneer and the forward-looking entrepreneur — it was un-American. Matt sees the rise of international corporations in the 20th century as largely responsible for the disparagement of homesickness, seeing it, as they did, as an obstacle to a mobile workforce. Homesickness indicated a lack of ambition, it was the very hallmark of a loser.

As Matt recounts, child psychologists began to tell parents that they should prepare their children for a life of mobility. The behaviourist psychologist John B Watson advised parents not to hug their children, as this would create emotional attachments that would be difficult to break when their child left home. Matt tells of one doctor who understood overly affectionate parents to be “America’s gravest menace” because they kept their sons from fighting the Communists. Homesickness was infantile dependence.

All of which illuminates something of what is behind the charge of ‘nostalgia’ so commonly levelled as an insult against Brexiters. Part of what I have against the Remain campaign is that it regards as inadmissible any sense of a yearning for lost home. It demands of Brexiters that they explain the advantage of leaving the EU, of the reclamation of national sovereignty, in exclusively economic terms.

Like the cod psychologists of the 20th century, they warn against attachments. In the borderless, globalised future they fondly imagine, home will be everywhere and nowhere. In order to keep up, people will need to be as fluid as capital. What they are saying to us is basically: “Don’t be big baby!” I remember this damaging line from my prep schools days. I didn’t like it then. And I don’t like it now.

Some months ago, UnHerd tasked its columnists with the invention of a new political party. I called my party Home. Perhaps only now, as I remind myself of the feelings I had on that miserable road to school, do I really begin to understand what that was all about. Homesickness is as legitimate a political instinct as any other.

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Liberalism has broken us – we need a new party to call Home

By Giles Fraser