00:03:33.420In fact, both England originally and France, and to some extent Ireland, Scotland, Wales, developed identities, their own identities through the conflict.
00:03:44.660The Scots were their alliance with France, us with our long conflict with France.
00:03:49.000And the French, as a great 19th century French historian said, the French came to realise they were French through fighting the English.
00:03:57.120This is in the first Hundred Years' War.
00:03:59.720And you might say, well, why is it still kind of there?
00:04:04.680And I think the answer's fairly plain.
00:04:07.540Both France and Britain have had huge influences on world history
00:04:15.660They've been major players on the world stage.
00:04:17.860And often as rivals, indeed quite often as enemies,
00:04:21.900sometimes as allies, quite often as enemies.
00:04:24.600And they got a bit obsessed with each other
00:04:27.220and like to see each other as opposites, though, in my view, they're in some ways rather similar.
00:04:33.860And another thing is that both for quite a long time now, indeed, the French, I suppose, since the Battle of Waterloo,
00:04:41.200have been rather obsessed with the idea that they are nations in decline.
00:04:45.900We all know that now. And, you know, you go to France, they'll say, you know, nothing works here anymore.
00:04:51.240And which is what we say all the time. There's a sense of countries in decline and even in crisis.
00:04:57.140And you might say, well, why does that play into the Anglo-French thing?
00:05:01.700And I think it's because both are really rather keen that the others should be doing worse than them.
00:05:07.220So, you know, you look at Le Monde or look at The Times and you see, you know, reports on things happening in France, fires in France, strikes in France.
00:05:15.520And if you look at the French press, it's often about, you know, unemployment in Britain.
00:05:20.700Another prime minister goes in Britain. Aren't we well off compared with them?
00:05:24.940And I think it's quite important in both countries to see themselves as doing at least not as badly as the other one.
00:05:32.080Although, you know, when we go there, of course, the other reaction is for people who are rather keen on the idea that their own country is in decline,
00:05:40.580which many people are, to go to France in our case or them to come here and say, wow, you know, we went to wherever.
00:05:46.740And it was really great. You know, the trains ran on time. The hospitals were great.
00:05:51.300Why are we so awful compared with them?
00:05:55.400So this kind of obsession works in all sorts of ways.
00:06:01.540And I suppose the thing that added to it was obviously Brexit.
00:06:07.300Because the EU, European integration, is something the French have been working hard at for at least a century.
00:06:17.060And it's really always been a French project and it's something which the French establishment agrees is something which is fundamentally in France's interest.
00:06:27.380Indeed, it's their great national project and has been for a long time now.
00:06:32.840And therefore for the British to walk away from it was a kind of slap in the face.
00:06:36.980But it also meant that the French absolutely want Brexit to fail.
00:10:00.280So, and what happened, of course, we all know about this.
00:10:04.340Well, I'm not sure how many people under the age of 30 do,
00:10:07.480but we sort of know about the Suez Crisis,
00:10:09.940in which both France and Britain made an attempt together
00:10:14.360to assert their power as imperial powers.
00:10:18.140You know, the last hurrah, if you like,
00:10:20.060of France and Britain as independent global powers.
00:10:23.680And it didn't work because the Americans,
00:10:26.620and to some extent the Russians, said no.
00:10:30.280so what happened the french say we must therefore we'll never trust the americans again we must
00:10:37.160look to europe that is our only in a sense our only real policy and the british on the other
00:10:42.120hand say we must never quarrel again with the americans and so america and the relationship
00:10:46.600with america will be our policy so although the british um did join the of course the common
00:10:53.080market as it then was it was always rather reluctantly and conditionally you know okay
00:10:58.760this is just a trade bloc. We don't want any talk of federalism. We're not going to go along with
00:11:04.240the session of sovereignty, etc., etc. Whereas for the French, that was always really the object.
00:11:10.060It was to make Europe a great power, in a sense with its capital in Paris, to stand up to the
00:11:17.100Americans. Whereas for the British, it was always how to be nice to the Americans. And as we saw
00:11:21.840at the time of Brexit, the Americans basically say, we want you to be in this European thing
00:11:27.920because we'll be sure that you'll be on our side.
00:11:31.620Or as the French would say, you're our Trojan horse or you're our poodle
00:11:35.040and you will do what we say and you'll make sure the Europeans
00:11:38.180don't do anything against our interests.
00:11:41.760Whereas for us, the American relationship was seen as a kind of the major player
00:11:49.080and the European membership of Europe was really a secondary matter.
00:11:54.400That's something the Americans wanted and something that would probably be quite good for the economy, though it never really was.
00:12:01.660But it was not the center of our foreign policy as it was for the French establishment.
00:12:07.220You know, I'm generalizing, obviously, but insofar as we can generalize about, you know, a consensus view among British politicians, officials, diplomats, we can say the same about the French.
00:12:18.240And they, well, you might say the Foreign Office tends to take a rather French view of things, at least it has in recent years, but traditionally there's been a clear difference between British and French views of their own national interest.
00:12:34.440And one of the things that you actually mention about in the book, Robert,
00:12:37.000which I enjoyed very, very much and I recommend for everyone to get,
00:12:40.260is when you were talking about Napoleon,
00:12:43.220Napoleon's vision for Europe was actually kind of similar
00:12:46.040to the European Union vision, wasn't it, in many ways?
00:24:38.400I was curious about something you keep hinting at
00:24:42.040in terms of the ideas of the French Revolution and Britain and other countries,
00:24:47.940because I'm reading between the lines of what you're saying,
00:24:51.240And it sounds like you're debunking a myth that I had in my head, perhaps, and, you know, feel free to carry on, which I sort of thought, well, you know, the English and the British, okay, you execute a king, you have your own Napoleon in Oliver Cromwell.
00:28:54.860Or B, we have to find some alternative.
00:28:56.720Or C, we have to have a democratic republic.
00:28:59.020Or D, we have to have an authoritarian system.
00:29:01.500And that argument has occasionally died down, but it's never entirely gone away.
00:29:07.840And what you see now was Macron, when he first was elected,
00:29:13.080saying he intended to rule like Jupiter.
00:29:16.760He was going to be this great national leader
00:29:20.760who would not get involved in the dirty details of everyday politics.
00:29:24.200He would be there as the guide of the nation, a kind of monarch, a Republican monarch.
00:29:27.940And when that goes wrong, what do the French say? They say, we've got to have a sixth republic then.
00:29:34.260We're now on the fifth. We'll have to have a sixth because we have to find the system that works.
00:29:39.300Whereas our reaction, of course, as we have no experience of that kind of constitution making,
00:29:46.060is to say we have to sort of tweak the system a bit. We have to reform the House of Lords or
00:29:51.140we have to devolve a bit to the regions. But you don't have anyone saying, what we need is to have
00:29:57.900a constitutional congress in which we will thrash out in detail exactly how we're going to govern
00:30:03.360the country in the future. It doesn't really occur to anybody in this country, except maybe a few
00:30:09.180Lib Dems. One of the things that is interesting to us, we spent a significant chunk of time on
00:30:17.960the show in previous years, certainly, talking about the kind of woke revolution that was running
00:30:23.680amok, particularly the Anglosphere, I would argue. And yet there are people who chart
00:30:28.860some of the origins of the ideas to the ideas of the French Revolution, the sort of radical
00:30:34.780egalitarianism, the overthrowing of all hierarchy, etc. Is that a fair assessment?
00:30:42.220Well, I think the French Revolution and the later, I mean, the Paris Commune, which I
00:30:46.940used to work on in my youth, was a good example. It gives people a kind of vision, which may
00:30:53.280be a very inaccurate one, a myth, a mythical vision of what the French call, or used to
00:30:58.180call, le grand soir, which is the great evening. You know, after the revolution has taken place,
00:31:03.800you can all go out and get drunk and have a great, because this is the end of the old
00:31:08.820system. And then, of course, you have to wake up next morning and try and do something else,
00:31:14.000and that's where it tends to go wrong. The hangover tends to be really bad.
00:31:17.760But, you know, this vision of a revolutionary, a great, you know, it's a very popular, you know, in some states it's entered popular culture with things like Les Misérables.
00:31:30.100You think, wow, you know, if only we could build a few barricades and wouldn't it all be great?
00:31:35.040And so the people who, there are people who go for that kind of thing.
00:31:38.280And I think it is, the myth is largely down to the French.
00:31:42.520You know, even if you want to have a Nigel Farage,
00:31:45.460anti-Nigel Farage T-shirt, you put a guillotine on it.
00:31:49.400You could put a gallows on it, but somehow that's not,
00:32:38.400Which is why my point was it's why it was successful versus the French Revolution creating a bloodbath is direct consequence of the fact you're not separating from an imperial power that's, in your perception, keeping you oppressed.
00:32:53.000You are overthrowing the existing regime, creating a power vacuum, and the bloodletting is inevitably the consequence of that.
00:33:02.180And it was our glorious revolution, which is in some ways more of a model for the American.
00:33:06.520You know, you get rid of a monarch whom you say is oppressing you, but you don't allow it to get out of hand.
00:35:29.420Well, of course, they've got the euro now, so they can't do that anymore.
00:35:34.880Homer wrote two of the most important books in Western literature.
00:35:38.460The Odyssey is the one that's had all the attention recently for obvious reasons.
00:35:41.980And the Iliad, the one about pride, rage and leadership, which is just as essential, now has a free course from Hillsdale to Hillsdale College's new free online course is taught by Professor Stephen Smith.
00:35:53.900It's not a highlight reel and it's not Homer for beginners.
00:35:56.520It's a proper walk through the text, honor, courage, leadership, friendship, sacrifice,
00:36:01.580and what it means to live a noble life.
00:36:03.860You come away understanding why Achilles' real fight isn't just with the Trojans,
00:40:35.860So he was all ready for this and just said, well, okay, I want the French fleet has to come sailing up the channel and escort us over, you know, it's only 20 miles and then we'll be in London and England will be dead, as he more or less put it.
01:11:20.120Today, a bit rather less. I mean, we shall see this in a sense at the next presidential election, because the thing that has held back the Le Pen family business, which is the, you know, the Front National, the Rallyment National, is its association with Vichy for many people in France.
01:11:40.960So, I mean, my wife, my co-author, would say, you know, I would never vote for Le Pen.
01:11:47.300And if I say, well, why? You know, she seems all right.
01:11:49.240Because, you know, what her father was, who these people were.
01:11:53.660These were the people who collaborated.
01:11:56.300These were the Vichy people, all their grandchildren, all their great-grandchildren.
01:12:00.420And the French have long historical memories.
01:12:03.900So I think it does still, so we shall see.
01:12:05.940If Le Pen becomes president, it will show that the younger generation, which is to say, really, you know, anybody under 40, under 50, no longer thinks of the Second World War as the defining experience.
01:12:19.520The people for whom it was the defining experience, of course, are largely no longer with us.
01:12:26.240You know, the people who remember it or who remember their parents remembering it, they're going.
01:12:33.280So, I mean, younger people are supposed to be much more willing to support Le Pen than older people.
01:12:38.180And to what extent is your wife's concern understandable instinctively, but inaccurate factually?
01:20:51.080And about Britain, both two countries, which I feel a strong attachment, is that they're both heading the same direction towards a polarization of politics in between, OK, a right wing coalition, which is almost certainly going to disappoint its followers.
01:21:09.060And the possibility of a left wing coalition, in our case, Greens, Nationalists, Lib Dems, Labour, who will cause chaos.
01:21:18.900And in the French case, you could have a Mélenchon-led coalition of the left against Le Pen, with Stop Le Pen as its slogan.
01:21:30.400And I think in that case, you're heading into very dangerous waters.
01:21:37.120We've been talking about history and how history reflects on the present.
01:21:42.460But in an odd way, the histories of France and Britain are so different.
01:21:47.740And yet we're facing the same sort of political, we seem to be facing the same sort of political future in which the centre is collapsing and polarisation is taking place.
01:22:01.440But with the polarized parties not at all, let's say, unable to create a sense that they would be capable of tackling the country's problems in both France and Britain.
01:22:18.000And so what you get, what you might get, is in fact a succession of weak and constantly changing governments,
01:22:26.920sort of cobbled together, centrist, relying sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right,
01:22:32.160which we've had in France ever since Macron came to power, really.
01:22:37.200Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on.
01:23:42.280but it's just letting all the weeds and the brambles grow.
01:23:44.180And I think that's what's, I think it's being accepted that that's one of the things that's causing a lot of the, or at least enabling a lot of these fires to spread, that people are not controlling.
01:23:55.600We have to manage, I think we have to manage the place where we live, we have to manage the countryside.
01:24:00.060And to just say, well, we're going to let it go back to nature is a recipe, as I think we've seen, for a lot of disaster.
01:24:08.600It's the same in every country that it's been done, I think.