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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 14 October 2025 on Monaca Radio.
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American journalists join American generals in not listening to Pete Hegseth. Madagascar's president scarpers and South Korea's cities prepare to get even gaudier. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Marion Mesmer and Phil Clark will discuss today's big stories. And we'll speak to Andrew Hussey about his new book, grappling with the political and cultural divisions of France. He was not short of material. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew. I'm Muller and I am joined today by Marion Mesmer, Senior Research Fellow in International Security at Chatham House and Phil Clark, professor of International Politics at SOAS, University of London. Hello to you both.
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C
Good evening, Andrew.
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B
Phil, first of all, you're back. On behalf, on behalf of our many bereaved listeners, where have you been?
- [01:23]
C
I mean, it's a wonder that this station has even survived my absence, Andrew. So I'm delighted to see you.
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B
Many people are seeing this.
- [01:30]
C
That's what I've heard, the clamour. I've been in Cape Town for the last nine months. I spend a good chunk of the year there, but I'm back to teach at SOAS this term, so delighted to be back in London.
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B
Well, we will be hearing more from you shortly. Marion, is there a seamless pivot from Cape Town to Stockholm? Not really. But that's where you've recently been.
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A
That's right, yeah. Phil and I were joking that we're both great at parties because, you know, whenever we're invited somewhere the topic is bound to be cheerful. I was in Stockholm for a track 2 dialogue between European and Chinese experts on space security and how to essentially make sure that the next war doesn't start over a space dispute.
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B
Did you come up with any solutions? Because that does seem fairly important.
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A
Well, I mean, I think we had some really cool ideas in terms of what kind of confidence building measures are low hanging fruit. So one suggestion was, for example, that China could host a British astronaut on their space station, which is sort of like tried and true space confidence building. And then some things were just super interesting. Right. I got a lot of questions from various Chinese experts about the extent to which British government can make independent decisions independent of The United States. And that was just so fascinating to me because I can see on the one hand how they would draw the conclusion that maybe the independence isn't quite there. But on the other hand, I do think they were kind of overstating to what extent they thought the UK was dependent on the US well, we will.
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Start in the United States, where reporting on Earth's most powerful military may shortly become dramatically, dramatically, rather circumscribed, which is probably fine. A near full house of American media has declined to sign up to new reporting rules proposed by U.S. secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, under which journalists would have to pledge not to obtain unauthorized material nor access certain areas unless accompanied by an official. As of this broadcast, the only agency which has signed up is One America News, a channel beloved of viewers who think Fox and Newsmax are pusillanimous mouthpieces of the global liberal conspiracy. Everyone else will just have to wait for Hegseth to accidentally copy them in on a signal chat. Phil, first of all, are we heartened to see this near unanimous response of American media telling Secretary Hegseth he can cram it?
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C
Yes, in a word, it's quite remarkable that even most of the right wing press in the US is also aghast at this move.
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B
Even Newsmax. And they're insane.
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C
Extraordinary. So if you're, if you, if you're too far gone for Newsmax, then you are in some very special territory. But, but you've actually mentioned the first thing that I wanted to say about this story was of course, the great irony of Pete Hegseth telling people that they need to be very careful with classified information does seem a little bit rich given the form that he had in terms of the US bombing campaign in Yemen, which he decided to share with the Atlantic editor on Signal. So this would be a tough message to take from any US official, but particularly in the case of Pete Hegseth.
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B
Marion, it is an audacious maneuver to, to credit Pete Hegseth, of all people, with any degr of seven dimensional chess. But is it possible that this is the response he was kind of hoping for, as in he proposes rules he knows almost everybody will say no to, in which case he can just say, well, tough luck, you had your chance. And he gets to go about his business unscrutinised.
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A
I don't know if that was the intention, but that certainly looks like it might be the outcome. Right. So whether if your option is either they sign up to it and have to comply with the rules, or they don't get any access to the Department of Defense, it's not a good outcome for freedom of press or, you know, information flows to the average American voter or, you know, whatever else kind of oversight powers you want to ascribe to the press. So that's pretty concerning I would say, Phil.
- [05:28]
B
Possibly from the wishful thinking file, but maybe is it good for reporting on the Pentagon if reporters are no longer concerned about protecting their access because they don't have any? And this is of course a tension which applies in all realms of journalism. On the one hand you get invited into the building which is journalistically useful and also you get to walk around wearing a fancy lanyard with a little thing with your face on it. And who doesn't enjoy that? But yeah, you can kind of wonder if I tell this particular story, will I be cast out?
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C
It could do because there's been this very cosy relationship developing between all branches of the US government and the US press in particular. It's been become a very managed show. So I guess this makes the antagonism absolute and may force American journalists to work a little bit harder. They're not going to get the kind of easy embeddedness in the Pentagon that they seem to have had for a very long time. I mean, I mean I was looking at what is being described as the Hegseth loyalty oath. I mean the wording of it is quite remarkable because it talks a lot about journalists being careful with unclassified documents and information. They can only deal with information that's authorised by the Pentagon. But it go further than that and basically says, I mean it's about an inch away from saying we need to see drafts of your articles before they get printed. I mean they haven't quite gone that far, but it's getting pretty damn close to it. So this is pretty brazen stuff from the US administration.
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Marine, can we amuse ourselves by imagining how MAGA Trump friendly media might have reacted had something similar been proposed by either President Biden or President Obama?
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I can't imagine it would have gone down well. Right? I mean they would have shouted from the rooftops about free speech and how it's curtailing that and so on. But the whole thing is a bit absurd to me because if you imagine the standard press briefing, it's already the most sort of managed environment possible. Right? Like you're giving a pre prepared speech that's been vetted and you can decide whether to take questions or not. You can decide whether to answer questions if you don't like the question asked and so I'm surprised that they are taking it that far because I don't really see what they're getting gaining. You know, it so obviously makes them look like cartoon villains without them necessarily getting much out of it. They could have just given the most superficial, empty press briefings that basically just give their line without engaging critically with the press.
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B
It could be an exciting whole, exciting new world of American journalism. Phil, we might have to go back to soliciting sources via phone and email and furtive meetings in dark car parks.
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C
I think so. I think this is what the US media is screaming out for. It seems such a placid space at the moment. It's time to liven it up and we have Hegseth to thank for that.
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B
And just lastly on this, Marian, and sticking with the theme of wishful thinking, is it possible that the Trump administration's desire to control, tame, suborn the American media, which is, as Phil was suggesting, fairly transparent, might actually push them into sort of open revolt?
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A
I mean, possibly. Right. I think the more you push people, the more you actually risk them pushing back in some way. And it might mean that journalists that previously didn't have very much in common with the journalists that already were quite marginalized all of a sudden feel much more solidarity. So that could be good if you have a sort of sort of collective remembrance of what journalism is sort of meant to be about and then them actually trying to hold the government to account. And I was also wonder whether it might actually lead to more stories being leaked directly to the press because we've seen it before, right, that sometimes civil servants or even political appointees that aren't quite happy with the direction take matters in their own hands by leaking a story to a friendly journalist. And if there now isn't necessarily a proper official channel for announcing things, there might just be more leaks and things might get a bit more rogue in that way.
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C
There's also something honest about what the US is doing because I feel like a lot of other countries try to do the same thing but don't do it. I mean, you've got Keir Starmer at the moment giving press conferences to three hand picked journalists, you know, from, from the BBC, Sky News and then what other. Any other sort of center rights media outlet he thinks is fairly friendly to him on any given topic, which is exactly the same thing. It's another form of media suppression. It's just sort of shrouded in classic, you know, British manners. Whereas at least, at least the Yanks are being completely transparent in the suppression.
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B
That'S going on well to Ukraine now and to an apparent resumption of the three steps forward, two steps backwards, several more sideways. And in circ dance, which has been conducted by Ukraine and its allies where weapons upgrades are concerned, Ukraine asks for a thing. Everybody fiddles with their sleeves and stares at their shoes while fretting that maybe this will be what prompts Russia to invade Finland. Then eventually everybody gives Ukraine what they wanted. Slightly too late for it to make much difference. All of which is by way of preamble to the suggestion that US President Donald Trump might or might not authorise the dispatch of Tomahawk long range missiles to Ukraine. To be clear, dispatch them to Ukraine with a view to Ukraine firing them at Russia. Marion, the Table's resident weapons Boffen, how much of a difference would actual Tomahawk cruise missiles make on top of everything else Ukraine has?
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A
Well, as you sort of alluded to, right, Ukraine is now almost at a place where it's got its own fieldable capability that has a similar range or actually as the Ukrainian weapons manufacturers say, slightly longer range, slightly better guidance. But I think that's not, not operational yet. So I guess the Tomahawks would be usable immediately, which is a big difference. The other difference is that these are the first missiles that would put Moscow firmly in range. So we've obviously seen Ukraine being able to hit Moscow in St. Petersburg and kind of further flung Russian cities or other Russian assets through drone operations. But the missiles would be able to do a bit more damage and it would be possible to fire them from Ukraine rather than coming up with a complicated pre positioning where you need to get the drones somehow into the country and then, you know, launch them from there. So I think it is significant and something that really struck me in all of this is sort of the, you know, a further symptom of the descent into madness by Dmitry Medvedev, who sort of originally started out as like a fairly centrist politician, but is now, I don't know, like the like bad guy in a sort of good cop, bad cop relationship with Putin, where he just says the most unhinged things on Russian social media, I guess, to signal what an extent of Russian thought is. And his warning sign to the US and Europe was essentially that you can't tell whether the Tomahawks are nuclear armed or not, and therefore Russia could take this as an escalatory step. But I actually looked this up because when I read this I was like, I'm pretty sure Tomahawks have not been nuclear armed. For a good long while. And it's true, the last nuclear warheads for Tomahawks were destroyed in 2013 or so. So that's really for anyone who's concerned, you know, I take nuclear threats pretty seriously, and that's, like, clearly completely made up and sort of. Yeah. From around the time that Medvedev was actually president himself.
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B
One does fear, Phil, for the state of Medvedev's drinks cabinet, certainly. But we have heard that warning also echoed by the Kremlin spokesman, slightly more sober Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. But this is of a pattern, is it not? This has been going on now for three and a half years. Every time anybody thinks about equipping Ukraine. And this began with pea shooters, pop guns and slingshots, and you get Russia going, whoa, if you give Ukraine slingshots, we will lay waste to the entirety of Eastern Europe. Can we stop taking these warnings by Russia seriously?
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C
At this point, it's clear that Trump has stopped taking those warnings seriously. I think that's one of the big things to come out of this episode, is this growing clarity from the US side that they don't see Russia coming to the negotiating table anytime soon, that they are 100% behind Zelensky. That whole charade that took place in the Oval Office, the embarrassment of Zelenskyy and the damage that did diplomatically seems to be a long way behind us. Now. Trump seems to have determined that he has to 100% back Ukraine here and Russia is fundamentally untrustworthy. So that's a real sea change in this whole dynamic. Now, whether the threat of sort of even further bolstering the Ukrainian artillery is the best way to resolve this conflict remains to be seen. But I think the clarity of the US position is really important to recognise here.
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Here.
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B
What do you think, Marion? President Zelensky is due back in Washington D.C. on Friday. And again, to the extent that it is possible to conclusively diagnose President Trump's mindset on anything, does he appear now to be slightly more on Ukraine's side than he has previously?
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A
I mean, I think he's pretty disappointed with Putin. Right. And that's the big difference. I'm still not convinced that President Trump is ever firmly on anyone's side for any length of time. But he really wants that Nobel Peace Prize. Right. And he really wants to be able to show something. I guess he's trying to make it appear as if things in the Middle east are finally going his way. So maybe he's feeling a little less desperate. About the situation in Ukraine. But I mean, he did say that he would end the war in Ukraine. Did he say on day one of his presidency? He made a pretty unrealistic claim about that. And he's obviously long shot past that deadline. And so I think, you know, he seemed to really personally be invested in his relationship with President Putin. And I think he probably feels quite personally attacked that that hasn't worked out in the way that he hoped. And, you know, President Zelensky seems to recently have been able to build more of a relationship with him. So hopefully that means that things will go better at this meeting than they have gone in the. But I wouldn't sort of overstate the permanence of the US Commitment to Ukraine.
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B
Phil, are we in the curious space now where there is actually legitimate reason to hope for good diplomatic outcomes which may save millions and millions of lives, based on the morbid obsession of one extremely strange old man with this one thing which has been denied him in an otherwise preposterously fortunate life?
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C
We are in a very strange territory where global peace hinges on Donald Trump. But it does weirdly seem that way at the moment. I guess my caveat to that is I wish he would stop claiming the five other completed peace process.
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Oh, no, it's seven. It's seven or eight now. I mean, we're including the thwarted war between. Was it Albania and Cambodia or. That's right, yeah, something like that.
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C
So if he were just to narrow his parameters down to the realistic peace processes that he may have had some involvement in, then perhaps that that success rate might look a little higher. But, but, but look, I guess everybody is holding their breath to see what happens in Gaza and whether that ceasefire in fact holds. But there is absolutely no doubt that the sort of bizarre obsession and determination of Trump and his personal relationship with Netanyahu seems to have been key in that regard. It, it is looking, though, like the Russia Ukraine situation is going to be even more difficult than Gaza. And I think one of the telltales for me here, and it's in today's reports, is this more, I guess, mocking, bellicose language that using towards the US and towards Trump. Personally, I don't think we've seen that. I mean, Medvedev's description of Trump was remarkable. And today he calls him the Star Spangled Uncle. I thought this is such a beautiful phrase. I mean, if he is tweeting this kind of while drunk, he's remaining, you know, quite coherent about it. But we've seen Russia actually try to mollycoddle Trump to flatter him. You know, that seems to have been their main diplomatic strategy up until now. Now we're starting to see more derision, more aggression coming from the Russian side, all of which I think perhaps neuters Trump's ability to try to contribute to the peace solution there. This looks like a real quagmire in the Ukraine, Russia situation.
- [18:05]
B
Just finally on that, Marion, and looking at this through the prism of what may or may not have been accomplished in Gaza, does that buy Trump any leverage with Putin? Do the Russians look at that image of Trump with sort of that enormous array of world leaders arrayed behind him, certainly a better crowd than Vladimir Putin could pull at this point and think, well, maybe he is serious?
- [18:30]
A
I don't think so. I mean, I think Russia is beginning to be very comfortable or has been very comfortable for a few years now in this new space where it has relationships only with a certain subset of countries. And I think the really big difference is also that the Russian government tends to be very institution focused. And so if it looks at how hollowed out the State Department is, how I'm sure many Russian diplomats that have been serving for decades, decades can no longer find US Counterparts and so on, they wouldn't estimate that as the US Being in a position of strength. They would probably see that as a position of weakness. Because even if we're talking about something like the new START arms control treaty extension that Putin proposed, if that requires any work that goes beyond a presidential agreement, the US doesn't currently have the political appointees in place that would normally lead these processes. And so for a state like Russia that really cares about process, that really cares about diplomatic history and legacy and so on, that isn't a good look.
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B
Well, to Madagascar now, where the eventful, rather political career of President Andre Rajo Elina would appear to have lurched to a dramatic halt. President Rajo Oelina, faced with an alliance of disaffected youth and Madagascar's military bearing down upon the Aoi Wahala palace in Antananarivo, has decided, probably wisely, to cut his losses and has skipped the country. He has since made a broadcast on social media in which he declined to say exactly where he was. The new man in charge, for the moment at least, appears to be one Colonel Michael Randrianarina of the influential military unit Capsat, which threw in its lot with Madagascar's Gen Z earlier this week. Phil, Events are moving and are very confusing, but is it clear that this military unit, Capsat, who, lest we forget, helped Rajo Alina into power back in 2009 in the first place have decided that he is now a bust.
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C
Yes, I think that is perhaps the only thing we categorically know in this situation is that the military are now in charge. Rajo Lina is gone. As to what happens now remains to be seen. I was speaking to a couple of my East African colleagues today. I mean, my patch tends to be more central Africa, but my East East African colleagues are saying to me, the thing you have to realize about the Malagasy military is they are so famously factionalised. So even, even Captain itself has all sorts of internal divisions and hierarchies that may play out in a very messy and violent way over the days to come. So they are by no means a sort of stabilizing force here. But the other thing that remains to be seen is what happens to these youth protests, because as we've seen in many other parts of Africa in the last few years, the youth may be agitated to get rid of the president and the current administration. The last thing they want is that administration be replaced by the military. This was not the reason they were out in the streets. They weren't there protesting against water and electricity cuts and high unemployment and all the rest of it in order to get CAPSAT in charge. So there's a high chance not only that CAPSAT itself is an incoherent beast, but also that the youth may be back out on the streets in a few days, pretty angry about what has replaced Rajo Olina. So lots to play out in the next week or two.
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B
And that would of course be a very high stakes endeavour. Marion, recently arrived military juntas not known for their fondness for large scale public protest. Colonel Randrion arena has been saying all the stuff that people like him usually do in such situations, which is that yes, yes, we will of course revolt, restore civilian rule, there will be elections, he's saying, within 18 months to two years. However, what would be our levels of confidence that that happens?
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A
I mean, I don't know a whole lot about Madagascar, but at least from what I've seen about the protests, they don't seem intense enough to me to justify that length of delay before you hold elections. So my concern would be that the military essentially sees this as them being here to stay. And two years down the line, the situation in the country could look completely different anyway. And they could come up with any number of reasons as for why they have to continue to delay holding elections.
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B
Phil, I realise there's a why not both answer to this question, but Are we looking here, do you think, more at something that fits a recent unwelcome revival of the coup d' etat across Africa as an instrument of statecraft, or as has been posited, a global wave of unhappy young folk? We have seen similar protests in, well, all sorts of places. Paraguay, Sri Lanka, Nepal. Most effectively, I think, is the word we want. Which of those is it more likely?
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C
I think the case. It's closest to the Gen Z protests in Kenya in the last 12 months. And there's a bit to that story that I haven't seen in the press picked up today in relation to Madagascar, which is, you know, one of the things that hampered Rajelina's government's ability to deliver social services is that this is an economy that is being absolutely battered by the World bank and the imf. So, like many African states, they took out huge emergency loans during the pandemic when they couldn't get access to the vaccines, and their economies had completely collapsed. And the World bank and the IMF are demanding that African states pay this debt back at a rate that we've never seen. And it's putting enormous pressure on African economies. Social services are therefore collapsing. And then we're seeing these youthful protests. And what happened in Kenya was a direct consequence of this kind of debt repayment. And exactly the same thing is happening in Madagascar. So, yes, this is about, to a certain extent, inept and corrupt domestic governments in these African states. But there's also a really important multilateral picture here about the role of international economic actors, the pressure that they're putting on these states, the undermining of welfare systems and social delivery systems. And we're seeing angry young people on the streets as well as a result of that.
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B
Well, to South Korea and to what is surely the Holy grail where advertisers are concerned, that is advertising that people will actually go out of their way to look at. Several South Korean jurisdictions are taking advantage of a recent relaxation of regulation around such things and are building massive outdoor screens in anticipation of an untapped market of people who spend their lives thinking, you know what? I just don't see enough of advertising. Although there probably are people not far from South Korea who do, in fact, know the feeling. The obvious models would be the likes of Piccadilly Circus in London or Times Square in New York City or other such public spaces which seem predominantly populated largely by Italian teenagers with fluorescent backpacks. Would you be enticed by this, Marion? Would you go out of your way to look at an enormous digital Advertising hoarding?
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A
Not at all. I have to say, I was thinking, you know, Times Square always looks so much better in pictures or films, but when you actually go in person, it's crowded and the ads don't look as nice as they do when you take a picture of it or when you see film of it. And yeah, I remember being supremely disappointed when I visited Times Square for the first time. And I was like, you know, what's the big deal? Why is this so famous? I don't see the appeal at all.
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B
What about you, Phil? Were you one of those antipodean hayseeds who comes to London and is disappointed when they go to Piccadilly Circus and find there isn't a lion tamer?
- [26:06]
C
It's very disappointing. I actually have to ride my bike through there tonight, and I'm still disappointed every time I go through there. But I think, like Marian, I'm sort of baffled by the idea that more of these hoardings will bring the hoards, pardon the pun, to Seoul and other capitals. I would have thought the sort of sensory overload and bright lights of these things would put a lot of people off. It sort of also reminded me about the current debate about sports stadiums and just this absolute overload of constantly flashing advertisements and the kind of, the impact on the viewership, I mean, that actually seems to be turning a lot of people away from going to sports events. This kind of absolute bombardment of. But clearly the South Korean government has a different idea and thinks that this, this will bring the tourists flocking.
- [26:49]
B
The thing you were saying, though, Marion, I think there is a lot to that. The idea that this, it doesn't look as cool when you actually go there. And I think, I mean, who wouldn't be disappointed by Times Square? That's a. That's a strange demographic. Who are those people who go to Times Square and go, oh, my God, it's everything I dreamed it would be. But is the point of these things not for people to actually look at them, but for them to be in the background when people take pict of themselves standing in front of them?
- [27:16]
A
Well, I kind of assumed, you know, same with the big screens on Piccadilly Circus, that it's just a high traffic area for some other reason? You know, like, for example, because it's a big hub of streets that come together or tube stations or whatever, and so the ads are there because people pass by. It didn't occur to me that you would try to use the ads to attract people. So that's kind of a new thought to me, because yeah, like, Phil, I, I wouldn't necessarily be attracted by that. And I also thought that advertising was moving much more and I like, you know, if you want to get people to come somewhere, you try to create an experience. You know, you have like a popup or whatever and, or you have an influencer there and like that might be obnoxious in a different way. But I thought you kind of like try to create an experience whereas like just having a screen with a bunch of ads which is basically the same as like your phone is showing you all the time anyway, I don't really see how that appeals to people.
- [28:07]
B
Well, just finally on this, Phil, because I was wondering about that earlier, is that are we surprised that big screens are apparently more attractive now that we have a small one in our pocket? Or maybe has the fact that we just have a small one we can look at anytime made big ones seem all the more marvellous?
- [28:25]
C
The odd thing at the heart of this is the South Korean government must have done their market research and found that there is a captive audience begging for this kind of thing. If you.
- [28:35]
B
Phil, it's not unheard of in the breadth of human experience for governments to make decisions which have absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever.
- [28:43]
C
Entirely possible, except the regulations around these things in Seoul were incredibly strict and I thought quite elegant. I had to look at this earlier and the limits on advertising in central Seoul were described in the language of the peaceability and the civility of the city. You know, that great thought had gone into the justification and for quite strict building regulations. All of that has been torn up. So I just, I did wonder the thought process. But yeah, I think, I think governments are usually pretty sure that they're gonna make a buck if they're gonna make a change as big as this.
- [29:17]
B
Phil Clarke and Marion Mesmer, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, the terror that haunts authors of book length nonfiction is that by the time their lovingly excogitated thesis reaches bookshelves, events or trends may have moved on to the extent that nobody wants to read about whatever is it is no such worry afflicts the author of a book about political turbulence and partisan division in France, who can be pretty certain of a timely news hook whenever their book rolls off the presses. The new one by Andrew Hussey arrives just as France's president, having apparently failed to find anyone else willing to do the job, has reappointed as of this broadcast. Etc. France's fifth Prime Minister since the start of Last year, Andrew's book is called Fractured A Journey Through a Divided Nation. I spoke to Andrew and began by asking if France today is really any more fractured than usual.
- [30:12]
D
Well, to be honest with you, the original title of the book was France in Fragments. And the reason, you know, I like, I like. I still like that title, France in Fragments, because it's got a dual meaning. Partly it's about my life in France, which is necessarily in fragments. It's fragmented, of course, but also as well, if I've got. I don't know whether I've got a thesis, but I've got some ideas, and that's different. And the ideas are, are that France is fragmented. There's one bit where I quote the philosopher Alan Finkelcraft, and he talks about what he calls the Lebanization of France, in which you've got all these different factions and parties and groups and they're all competing, but they're not sure what they're competing for, but they're competing against each other. It's all about sort of, you know, things falling apart. So Fractured France, I think, is an okay title, but if there's anything fractured, it's the same thing as being fragmented. And what I mean by that, if there's an overwhelming idea, idea is that France is not Britain and France is not Britain for lots of reasons. History, one of them, and the French Revolution and the idea of the Republic, and particularly the idea of the Republic and the visible. And I always say that I'm a kind of monarchist in Britain, which I am, and I'm a republican in France, and I believe in the French Republic as the republic, and the. It can't be divided or separated up or fragments or fractured. But over the past 40 years, which is really the time frame of the book, I go from being a young lad who's not really understanding France to now kind of understanding that the France that I fell in love with is maybe still there, but it's in great danger.
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B
You illustrate this by choosing a few different places around France and. And obviously that is a. Well, there's. There's choices being made there because France is a huge country and you couldn't possibly visit all. So how did you narrow it down? What were you looking for in the places that you chose?
- [32:08]
D
Partly, I've got to say that it was a roll of the dice because it's a huge country. And I just knew from the beginning that I wasn't going to be able to cover west, you know, and Brittany, and it was very, very complicated. So My first choice was to go to places that I knew well or that had a meaning for me, like Leon and Dijon and then places that I didn't know well, but I thought were kind of like vulnerable places like Angers and reason why I'd never been to those places before because they're very bourgeois, they're very sort of La France profond and so on. And that was a voyage of, you know, sort of adventure for me. And of course it kicked off in Roubaix in the north of France for the very simple reason. It's got a terrible reputation as the poorest town in France and it's given birth to all these jihadis. I think I mentioned the STI Dala, who are the white, blue eyed, blonde haired working class terrorists, the sti, the Scousers, the northerners who come from the north of France who have become jihadi terrorists. So I went to places that intrigued me and of course I end up in Marseille, which is a love affair, always has been a love affair for me, which is in a way the starting point for me next book as well.
- [33:19]
B
I mean, that first place you mention is where you begin drawing out a lot of the themes of the book. It is when you meet people who are on the, the front lines of various of these concerns. Islamist terrorism, which France seems to have had a bigger problem with than most European countries, and populism, which has arisen arguably in response to that. But when you look at the kind of populist eruptions in France in recent years, you mentioned obviously the Gilets Jaunes, the Yellow Jacket movement, does it strike you as peculiarly French or is this part of a global phenomenon that we're seeing, you know, here with the Brexiters and allied movement in the United Kingdom and with Trumpism in the United States?
- [34:00]
D
I think it's both at the same time and they talk about this a lot in other forums. The on the one hand you've got global politics, global geopolitics, and you've got trends and moods, if you like atmospheres. So you've got populism, you've got forages and you've got Trumpism, et cetera, et cetera. And this, this France is no exception to that. Except that when you download it's like, like the cloud, isn't it? It's over everything, it's, it's transnational. But when you download it into local conditions, into France, it takes on local meanings and inevitable because of French history and because of the French context. And I'll give you A very clear example of that is anti Semitism. You know, France has got the biggest population of Muslims in, in Europe, but it's also got the most fragile and vulnerable group of Jews in. In Western Europe. French history has not distinguished itself through, you know, what happened during the Second World War and the Vichy years and a lot of the second half of the 20th century. And a good, you know, amount of the 21st century is still unraveling, all of that. And of course, what going on in the world at the moment with Israel and Gaza and so on, it's hitting hard in France, as is everywhere, but in a specifically French context, going back to other groups like the Gilet Jones and so on. Yes, they are specifically French, I think, because they come from a very French word, the actual. The earth itself, the ground itself. There are populist reactions to elitist global politics, but in a very French way.
- [35:37]
B
You know, the traveling and research you did, I mean, the book is primarily a work of diagnosis. Did you come up with a prognosis? Where does it strike you that this is leading? Because we're not far away from yet another French presidential election, which will very likely be a contest ultimately between somebody of the far right and somebody not of the far right.
- [35:59]
D
Well, I started writing the book in 2017, and I remember that time there was a very senior academic university here still. And I interviewed him and he said to me, he said, Macronism is going to be a massive failure and it's going to be one of the great dangers for France, more than Le Pen, more than anything else. And, you know, asked him what he meant by that, and what he said by, you know, what he said was true. He says the Macron generation is politically homeless. And I honed in on that, particularly in the section in France where I speak to a lot of young people about this, and he says, what's going to happen is that, you know, people are going to vote for Macron over the next couple of years, but there's nothing there. There's no project there. There's. There's. There's no sense of connection to people. There's no sense of connection to French history, and it's leaving a great big vacuum. So the question for 2027 is, what is going to fill that vacuum? And I've been a. I've spent a lot of time with the right wing in particular, the far right in particular. I've attended meetings, I've interviewed people, and also, you know, picking up on. On ordinary life, and I don't like making predictions because I always make them, you know, badly. But I do have a very specific sense that what' happen in France over the next couple of years is going to completely transform Europe. And by mean by that, I don't mean just the Giorgio Maloney type of far right government. I mean whatever is in the random national that we don't know about is going to take power.
- [37:23]
B
I think that was Andrew Hussey speaking to me earlier. Fractured France, A Journey Through a Divided Nation is available now. That's all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Marion Messmer and Phil Collins Clark. The show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.