John Lichfield

1 week ago | thelocal.fr | John Lichfield

Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not like journalists, especially British or American journalists. Interviews with him have a habit of exploding into insults after a few minutes. All credit then to Leila Abboud, the Paris bureau chief of the FT, who lasted more than three hours with the bad-tempered old fox in an interview published last weekend. She even managed to make the hard-left veteran appear likeable.

2 weeks ago | thelocal.fr | John Lichfield

There are, by my calculation, 17 doctors within 15 kilometres of my village in the hills of Calvados. When I need to see a doctor, I can usually get an appointment within 24 hours. If I lived 50 kilometres to the south, in the great, green, sprawling, empty département of the Orne, life would be very different. The Orne has only 264 general practitioners – 66 fewer than it needs to reach the national average of 0.83 doctors for every 1,000 people.

4 weeks ago | thelocal.fr | John Lichfield

French PM François Bayrou is many things but he is not a populist. He believes in trusting the people, not lying to them. Populists tell the people that all their woes come from “cheating foreigners” (Donald Trump), “immigrants” (Marine Le Pen), “Europe” (Nigel Farage), “the rich” (Jean-Luc Mélenchon), “the elites” (all of the above).    Bayrou told the French people this week that their problems came from…themselves.

1 month ago | thelocal.fr | John Lichfield

Emmanuel Macron will have served two five-year terms, which is all that the constitution allows. Marine Le Pen will be banned as a convicted embezzler of public money, unless she at least partially wins her appeal next year. So who will be the next President of the Republic? Jordan Bardella, Marine Le Pen’s glib sidekick, will be only 32 years old. Even Le Pen suggested publicly the other day that her protégé was “not ready”.

1 month ago | thelocal.fr | John Lichfield

The Paris criminal court has given her the chance to live her dream. For the time being, she appears reluctant to do so. She continues to breed lies instead. Her five-year ban from electoral politics is everyone’s fault but hers, she says. “The system” is trying to destroy the saviour of the people. Meddling judges have used a “nuclear bomb” against democracy. The voices of 10,000,000 people have been silenced.