Historian Robert Tombs on the 1,000-Year Rivalry Between Britain And France

As a great 19th century French historian said, the French came to realise they were French through fighting English. Both for quite a long time now, indeed the French, I suppose, since the Battle of Waterloo, have been rather obsessed with the idea that they are nations in decline. The idea of European integration was to make sure that Germany was no longer an ancient France and secondly to make sure that France was essentially leading Europe. So that's how France becomes a great power again. Brexit was the way of re-asserting our positions a great nation. It's their great national project and has been for a long time now. And therefore for the British to walk away from it, it was a kind of slap in the face. But it also meant that the French absolutely want Brexit to fail. In many ways we respond to the same challenges in opposite ways. A YouTube popular is life too easy. Then head over to our merch store and change your life forever by telling the world you watch trigonometry. You'll be able to buy hoodies, t-shirts, caps, stickers, posters and of course the world famous trigonometry mug. The one thing that we wanted to focus is something you come in one of your books, which is the England versus France and now Britain versus France rivalry. Tell us the most fun book I've ever done, I think, by a long way. And you have personal experience. I think you're married to a French lady. Yes, we were co-authors. Yes, indeed. So the rivalry is injected throughout. Yes, it's in the book. That's right. Tell us about England and France and the rivalry between these two I mean, I was about to say countries, but actually it goes, it precedes the existence of countries at all. It does really. In fact, both England originally and France and to some extent Ireland, Scotland, Wales developed identities, their own identities through the conflict. They're the Scots with their Alliance with France, us with our long conflict with France. And the French, as a great 19th century French historian said, the French came to realise they were French through fighting English, and this is in the first 100 years war. And you might say, well, why is it still kind of there? And I think the answer is fairly plain. Both France and Britain have had huge influences on world history in the last 300 years. They've been major players on the world stage. And often as rivals, indeed, quite often as enemies, sometimes as allies, quite often as enemies. And they've got to be obsessed with each other. And like to see each other as opposites, though in my view, they're in some ways rather similar. And another thing is that both for quite a long time now, indeed, the French, I suppose, since the Battle of Waterloo have been rather obsessed with the idea that they are nations in decline, we all know that now. And you know, you go to France, they'll say, nothing works here anymore, which is what we say all the time. So there's a sense of countries in decline and even in crisis. And you might say, well, why does that play into the Anglo-French thing? And I think it's because both are really rather keen that the others should be doing worse than there. So, you know, you look at Le Monde, or look at the Times, and you see reports on things happening in France, fires in France, strikes in France. And if you look at the French press, it's often about, you know, unemployment in Britain. Another prime minister goes in Britain, aren't we well off-compared with them? And I think it's quite important in both countries to see themselves as doing at least not as badly as the other one. Although, you know, when we go there, of course, the other reaction is for people who are rather keen on the idea that their own countries in decline, which many people are, to go to France, in our case, or them to come here and say, wow, you know, we went to wherever, and it was really great. You know, the trains ran on time. The hospitals were great. You know, why are we so awful compared with them? So this kind of obsession works in all sorts of ways. And I suppose the thing that added to it was obviously Brexit. Because the EU and European integration is something the French have been working hard at least a century. In the 1920s, they first proposed it. And 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. Indeed, it's their great national project and has been for a long time now. And therefore, for the British to walk away from it was a kind of slap in the face. You know, it has to fail. Because if it looked like succeeding or even not being a disaster, it would reflect badly on the whole EU project. So of course, the French want it to fail, or at least be seen and be seen to fail. And so this has re-injected a new element into the old story of the rivalry. And what is it about the mindset of the French elites, as you describe it, that makes them think that the European Union is in the interest of France and a good idea more generally? Well, I think essentially it was the conflict with Germany. You know, one shouldn't assume, of course, where we don't, that any country has an exclusive relationship with another. We and the French, of course, have one. But we also have ours with the Americans. We have a, you know, we aspire to a special relationship with the French. The French have a similar relationship with Germany, of course, the two of us. Some check it as we know. After all, it did invade France three times in 150 years. And therefore, the European integration project was essentially to make sure that Germany was never a threat again. And although, you know, so rather as we do with the Americans, the French are very keen to show how wonderful their relations with Germany are. These fray occasionally, as we know, but lots of gestures about friendship and special friendship and so on. Because it can't be accepted that this isn't true. And so the EU, or from the very beginning, the idea of European integration was to make sure that Germany was no longer a danger to France. And secondly, to make sure that France was essentially leading Europe. De Gaulle said, I feel very, very shrewdly. We have to behave like a great power because we no longer are one. And leading Europe has been the French thing since the 1950s. And nothing that can be allowed to get in the way that I see. So if you're no longer a great power, but you sit atop of the European conglomerate, you then are effectively projecting power for 500 million people that live in Europe. So you hope. So you hope. And you are there for powerful again. Yes. That's really interesting. And of course, coming back to the history of it, my understanding and do correct me if this is wrong is one of the reasons there has been this great rivalry between Britain and France many times. And history is that Britain's England and then later Britain has perceived this national interest to be to prevent the emergence of a hegemonic power on the continent. Yes. To which France has repeatedly aspired. And Brexit, you might argue, is yet the latest iteration of that. Yeah, absolutely. And indeed, again, this fits into the story, as you say, because for the French to make Europe is the reassertion of their greatness as a nation. For Britain, at least for those who supported Brexit, Brexit was the way of reasserting our position as a great nation, no longer simply part of a block. So in many ways, we respond to the same challenges in opposite ways. So this goes back to the 1950s, very obviously, when European integration after the Second World War got off to another start. And what happened, of course, we all know about this. Well, I'm not sure how many of you have done the age of 30, do, but we sort of know about the Suez crisis in which both France and Britain made an attempt together to assert their power as imperial powers, you know, the last to arrive, if you like, a France and Britain as independent global powers. And it didn't work because the Americans and to some extent the Russians said no. So what happened? The French say we must therefore, we'll never trust the Americans again, we must look to Europe. That is our only, in a sense, our only real policy. And the British, on the other hand, say we must never quarrel again with the Americans. And so America and the relationship with America will be our policy. So although the British did join the, of course, the common market as it then was, it was always rather reluctantly and conditionally, you know, okay, this is just a trade block. We don't want any talk of federalism. We're not going to go along with the session of sovereignty, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas for the French, that was always really the object. It was to make Europe a great power, in a sense with its capital in Paris, to stand up to the Americans. Whereas for the British, it was always how to be nice to the Americans. And as we saw with the time of Brexit, The Americans basically say we want you to be in this year. European thing, because we'll be sure that you'll be on our side, or, as the French would say, you're our Trojan horse or you're our poodle, and you will do what we say, and you'll make sure the Europeans don't do anything against our interests. Whereas for us, the American relationship was seen as a kind of the major player, and the European membership of Europe was really a secondary matter, that something the Americans wanted, and something that would probably be quite good for the economy, though it never really was, but it was not the centre of our foreign policy, as it was for the French establishment. You know, I'm generalising, obviously, but in so far as we can generalise about, you know, a consensus to among British politicians, officials, diplomats, we can say the same about the French, and they, 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 interests. And one of the things that you actually mentioned about in the book, but we're trying to enjoy it very, very much, and I recommend everyone to get, is when you were talking about Napoleon, Napoleon's vision for Europe was actually kind of similar to the European Union vision, wasn't it, in many ways? It wasn't a way, I mean, Napoleon was a great moderniser, as he saw it, indeed you could say what he really was. He did say at one point, there's not enough sameness in the European nations. So a single system of law, single system of administration, okay, an empire, but it was a logic, a bureaucratic and military empire, it was meant to be something that would sweep away the old distinctions, the old conflicts. And you know, some, some things he did, you know, abolishing feudalism, abolishing the power of churches, putting a stock to anti-Semitism, those were things that, of course, many people in Europe welcomed the British, I get, saw it differently, we, we didn't ever want a Europe which would be dominated by Napoleon. Indeed we weren't terribly keen on his idea of what a modern Europe should look like. So you know, for that reason, the, the conflict went on for whatever, however many years it was, 15 years, 20 years, and it became a global conflict and it was one that really set the pattern of power in the world for, well, for more than a century or for a century anyway. And before we really focus about Napoleon, because we're obviously going to want to talk about him, it seems as well that his ideas not only were generated through his own vision, but they also came from the French Revolution as well, didn't they? So let's talk about the French Revolution, why was it so important? And what effects did it have not only in France, but in Europe, but also the UK as well? Great Britain at the time. Well, I take, I'm not sure this is a sort of slightly heretical view, but I take a rather reductionist view. I mean, people talking about the French Revolution, they go on about the ideas of the Enlightenment, the ideas about democracy, how the French learned from the Americans, life and all that stuff. And therefore they decided they wanted to have a revolution which would modernize the country and bring it. Well, it seems to me that the French Revolution was essentially a reaction to defeat. The French had lost the Seven Years War. They won the War of American, the American War of Independence. That was their great victory, but they got nothing out of it except vast debts. They then found that they were pretty well muted on the world stage because of their lack of money, very familiar story. And the revolution came because they almost became a failed great power. Okay, you know, yes, the peasants and the workers, all that, the stormy, the best deal, all that happened, of course, but it was essentially. well, actually Burke said this, if I can remember it correctly, said that the French Revolution was not to make France happy, it was to make her powerful. And I think the revolution was really about recreating France as a power. And you know, you could say, well, people like Robespierre or Donne-Tourne, so on, they were very keen on the people's rights, weren't they? Yes, they were. They were also very keen on spreading French influence across Europe. And in a way Napoleon didn't really change that, what he did was to, as he said, he cleaned it up. You know, he cleaned the mud off the French Revolution and gave it permanent institutions. But the French dominance of Europe was something that they all agreed on. And it was a concern for Britain at the time, wasn't it, when what was happening? And Britain was in a quandary because on the one hand, this was this ancient enemy. On the other hand, it was kind of better the devil you know with the royal family, wasn't it? Well, when the Bastille fell, the British Ambassador was keen to calm things down. This is in the book, by the way, it's a nice story. He decided that a cricket tour would be rather a good idea to calm the French down. So he recruited a cricket team. That's the power it needs to make to British democracy through the ages. Well, Mary Antoinette was supposed to have kept his bat as a souvenir. But cricket didn't catch on in France quite a long time. But the British, first of all, thought, wow, this is great. France is turning into a new version of Britain. And if Louis XVI is taken down a peg or two, that suits us very well. France will be weaker and hence we will be stronger. What they didn't, of course, realize at first was that it wouldn't make France weaker. It would make France stronger. And Britain went to all with the French Revolution, not really because we didn't like the ideas of the Revolution because a lot of people did. The Wings did, Charles James Fox did, all those people thought it was great. It was because the French were going to invade Holland and that, you know, brings you back to the almost the oldest and most permanent part of British European policy, which is we don't want a potential enemy in the low countries. Because if you want to invade Britain, if you want to invade England, at least, if you want to sail up the Thames Estuary, that's the place to do it from. It doesn't matter. You can have a navy in too long or in breast. Safe distance away, you can't have an enemy navy in Ostend or Rotterdam and that's why we went to all the French. And also as well, they got involved in Ireland, didn't they? They did. Yes. Well, of course our relations with Ireland, as the late Queen said, have not been, have not in every way been what we would wish, and still not. What the English were particularly interested in Ireland force in order to stop it being used as a jumping off point for an invasion, that almost that's the only thing that really counted deep down. But of course it was. It was always potentially the place that the enemy would invade you from. If Ireland was independent, is it now really independent? Well, it's kind of disarmed and neutral, that's the next best thing, I suppose. But if Ireland was in the past, there'd been a potential ally of Spain, then a potential ally of France, in the Second World War, a potential ally of Germany, these were things that Britain could not accept. And in the Second World War, it was made pretty clear to the Irish government that they had to be very careful. And they were. Okay. Doverlayer of the President did, as you probably know, present his condolences to the German legation when poor hair Hitler met a sticky end. But apart from that, they didn't much help the, they didn't really help the Germans. The IRA would have done if they could have done, but they didn't get around to it. The people who watch this show have generally done more thinking about how governments operate the most. But there's a difference between understanding the problem and having actually built insulation against it. That's a world Michael Thoroughup operates in. He's been living as an expat for over 25 years, visiting more than 110 countries and calling nine of them home. He founded expat money nearly a decade ago to help others do the same. He helped someone build an international plan B. The knowledge he brings is entirely first and every recommendation comes from something he has already done himself. Expat money works specifically with freedom-minded families and investors who want to reduce their exposure on any one government or any one system. Second residency, second citizenship, offshore banking, international real estate, legal structures that spread your life across borders. Michael has put together a free report called Plan B Residencies and Instant Citizenships. It covers five routes to a second passport, including one that almost never gets discussed. Our foreign residency functions as genuine political insurance, which countries actually make sense depending on what you're trying to protect and what it realistically costs. Go to expatmoney.com/trigger or click the link in the description of this episode to download the report. There's no charge, no catch. That's expatmoney.com/trigger. And so the French Revolution happened and then How did that lead to the rise of Napoleon? Because it wasn't instantaneous. - No, no, it's kind of a pattern, or at least you can see it as a pattern. What is a revolution? You have a breakdown, you know, the fall of the Bastille, the storming of the Winter Palace in Russia, whatever. The collapse of the old regime. And then you have a period of chaos. Everybody says we want our peace of the action. So the workers joining it, the peasants joining it, the army joins it, whatever. And then sooner or later people say, this is awful, this is worse than it was before. We need somebody to restore order. In the French case, it was Napoleon in the Russian case. It was Lenin or Stalin. And you know, many people say, well, okay, this isn't what we really wanted or expected, but above all, we want to get back to living our lives, earning our living, and we're willing to accept. In fact, a stronger and more authoritarian system that we had before. So you storm the Bastille, or you get rid of Tsar Nikros II, but you find you've ended up with a government that is much more powerful and much more oppressive than they were. And most people say, well, thank goodness for that. Because we've had enough of all the killing, the violence, the chaos, the poverty, the inflation, you know, all that. And in the book, you actually say that Napoleon was the last Frenchman to transform Britain. - Yeah, suppose he was really. The last one who's really had a major effect on us. I mean, to go, not really, I think. But Napoleon is someone who forced Britain to mobilize itself in a way to never done before in defense. To a quite extraordinary extent. I'm not sure I remember all the figures, but something like 40% of all British men were doing some sort of military service. It's sort of, you know, this is World War. This is 20th century levels of mobilization. And it was done largely by amateurs, by local government, by Lord's left-end and mayors, or by Vickers, parish councils. And I think that meant you could never really put the court back into the bottle in the sense that people have seen them, that they themselves are effectively citizens. And therefore, why do they should have a right to have some say in politics? And after the, it's not the only reason, but you know, after the end of the Napoleon it was, you do have a radical movement that says, we're not willing to go back to the system in which a small minority, even if they were quite good, run things and most people just do as they're told. Yeah, let's elect idiots to run everything badly. How well that is working out. Well, actually, I mean, 18th century stated work quite well. Well, that's what I'm kind of jokingly thinking of. I was curious about something you keep hinting at in terms of the ideas of the French Revolution and Britain and other countries. Because I'm reading between the lines of what you're saying. And it sounds like you're debunking a myth that I had in my head, perhaps, and feel free to carry on. Which I sort of thought, well, the English and the British, okay, you execute a king. You have your own Napoleon in all of a Cromwell. Yes, exactly. And then you decide, actually, we don't want to do this. Yes. And you go back to having a royal family where the French really, really go at it. They change the weight system, the measurements. They do, yes. They get rid of all of this. Yes. And I sort of thought, well, you know, there's the British way of doing things and there's a French way of doing things and they're radically different. Yes. You keep hinting that that isn't quite right. Well, I don't think it is quite right. In fact, it's funny that some, there was a school of French historians in the early 19th century who believed that history followed certain patterns and Britain in exactly the way you said had set the pattern. So you have an old regime, Charles I, then you have a revolution and you execute the king. And then you have a dictator, Oliver Cromwell, and then you restore the monarchy and you have a parliamentary system. And they said, ah, that's just what's happening in France. We had Louis XVI, we had Robespierre, we had Napoleon. And now we're going to bring back, we're going to restore the monarchy. And so there is stored Louis XVIII. And then that didn't work. So they had another go and they restored Louis Philippe so they had two more go's of monarchy after the revolution. And then they had a third go, which was Napoleon III, another monarchy. So we think, oh well, 1793 was the end of the French monarchy. Well, it wasn't actually because it went on till 1870. And indeed, there's no reason to think he wouldn't have carried on had they not been invaded successfully by Germany. It's usually defeat in war that makes revolutions possible. Of Russian revelations. Yeah, Russia is, of course, a classic example, but China too. And Germany and Austria, it's when the state is defeated and proves that it's no longer capable of defending the country that it goes. Sometimes it just goes, you know, there's nothing left. Sometimes it's overthrown. And then you have a revolution. Well, you know, if you wanted to say what's the great fact about British history, well, we haven't been successfully, but we have been invaded. We haven't been conquered since 1066. And that is a great reason for having a pretty stable system. You might say, what a pity we didn't have a few revolutions on the way. Well, we had the, as you say, we had 1649, but it was a religious war. And it was something that was never really popular. Most people always supported the monarchy. Indeed, most people on the parliamentary side supported monarchy. They executed Charles I because they felt they had no choice in the matter. But they didn't really want to do it. So, you know, it was a sort of semi-revolution. And as you probably know, the famous levelers who are often sort of promoted as the inventors of English democracy, they eventually went over to Charles II. Almost everybody wanted a restoration by the end, which wasn't the same, which wasn't true in France. Or at least if they wanted a restoration, they weren't sure which monarchy they wanted back. And that in some ways is, you know, if you wanted an explanation of French instability in the 19th century, and even up to now, it's because they've never really wholly agreed on the system of government. So you have to keep trying new ones. So I used to know how many constitutions France has had since 1789. It's quite a lot. And of course, we've never had a codified constitution. So in France, you say, we had an ancient monarchy, which has now gone. Well, A, we have to restore it. Or B, we have to find some alternative. Or C, we have to have a democratic reform. Or D, we have to have an authoritarian system. And that argument has occasionally died down, but it's never entirely gone away. And what, you know, what you see now is, was Macron when he first was elected, saying he intended to rule, you know, like Jupiter. He was going to be this great national leader who would not get involved in the dirty details of every day. Politics, he would be there as the guide of the nation, a kind of monarch, a Republican monarch. And when that goes wrong, what do the French say? They say we've got to have a six-strip public then, we're now on the fifth, we'll have to have a sixth. Because we have to find the system that works. Whereas our reaction, of course, is we have no experience of that kind of constitution-making, is to say we have to some tweet the system a bit. You know, we have to reform the House of Lords, or we have to devolve a bit to the regions. But you don't have anyone saying, what we need is to have a constitutional congress, in which we will thrash out in detail, exactly how we're going to govern the country in future. Doesn't really occur to anybody in this country. So, maybe a few Lib Dems. [LAUGHTER] And I was-- one of the things that is interesting to us-- you know, we spent a significant chunk of time on the show, you know, in previous years, certainly talking about the kind of woke revolution that there was running a mock across the-- particularly the Anglosphere, I would argue. And yet there are people who chart some of the origins of the ideas to the ideas of the French Revolution, the sort of radical egalitarianism, the overthrowing of all hierarchy, et cetera. Is that a fair assessment? Well, I think the French Revolution, and the later-- I mean, the Paris Commune, which I used to work on in my youth, was a good example of it. It gives people a kind of vision, which may be a very inaccurate one, a mythical vision of what the French call, or used to call, Le Grossoir, which is the great evening. After the revolution has taken place, you can all go out and get drunk and have a great-- because this is the end of the old system. And then, of course, you have to wake up next morning and try and do something else. And that's where it tends to go wrong. But I can hang on for tens of years, really bad. But this vision of a revolutionary-- a great-- you know, it's a very pop-- you know, in some states, it's entered popular culture things like 'Libby Zihab', and you think, wow, you know, if only we could build a few barricades and wouldn't it all be great? And so the people who go for that kind of thing, and I think it is the myth is largely down to the French, you know, even if you want to have a Nigel Farage, anti-Nigel Farage t-shirt, you put a guillotine on it, you could put a gallows on it, but somehow that's not a romantic appeal of chopping people's heads off. And, you know, we talk about heads rolling. It's this kind of myth of. Well, I suppose, sorry to interject, I suppose guillotine is a weapon of the people, whereas the gallows is a weapon of the state. Yes, of course, the people have often strung people. Oh, of course. Yeah, with no gallows whatsoever, a tree-rightful dude, honestly. And so it's interesting to me that that's. And one of the other things that I've often thought about is, we call the American Revolution, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution, the French Revolution. The American Revolution was not a revolution. No, because the Americans used to call it, I mean, maybe we've adopted American things as we often do, but we used to call it the American War of Independence, which is what it was. Correct. Which is why it's. My point was 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, you're overthrowing the existing regime, creating a power vacuum, and the bloodletting is inevitably the consequence of that. And one of our glorious revolution, which is in some ways that more of a model for the American, you get rid of a monarch whom you say is oppressing you, but you don't allow it to get out of hand. You don't allow the mob to rule. You basically keep in the hands of intelligent people like us who will tell the plebs to go back to work and calm down. That's right. And one of the things I long underappreciated is just how much the money that the French spent trying to screw over the British and supporting the American independence ended up impoverishing them, indebting them and causing the French Revolution. Yeah, well, it basically bankrupted the monarchy. And the reason they had to call a meeting of the Estates General, which was the first step, which was in effect to the end of the old regime, in which the law was what the king said it was. There's a wonderful speech that was made by Louis the 15th to the Paris-Pallemont, which was essentially a supreme court, in which he said, "He more or less than I am the state, all power resides in me. The law is what is my will. No power can be exercised by anyone apart from outside me. No other institution has a new power apart from the power I give it." And that was what the monarchy was. And that collapses. You have to find another way of doing it. But it collapsed when they called the Estates General and basically said, "Gentlemen, we've run out of money. We want you to meet and agree to give us a lot more." And they basically said, "That's not what we're going to do. If you want any money, you're going to have to agree to a constitution. We're going to change the whole system and that's what happened." But it was essentially a response to state bankruptcy, which and the bankruptcy came about through fighting too many wars with Britain. So we want, thanks to the city of London, and being able to raise fabulous amounts of money, and because people thought, I hope they still do think that, that Parliament will ensure that people who buy British guilt will not be ripped off. Whereas in France, you could be, that you know, the king could say, "Well, we'll not pay you. Too bad." I mean, we should never trust the French. You are correct. You're absolutely correct. Of course, they've got the euro now, so they can't do that anymore. Homer wrote two of the most important books in Western literature. The Odyssey is the one that's had all the attention recently for obvious reasons. And the Iliad, the one about pride, rage, and leadership, which is just as essential, now has a free course from Hillsdale 2. Hillsdale colleges, new free online courses, taught by professors Steven Smith. It's not a highlight, real, and it's not Homer for beginners. It's a proper walk through the text, honor, courage, leadership, friendship, sacrifice, and what it means to live a noble life. You come away, understanding why Achilles' real fight isn't just with the Trojans, it's with himself. This is one of more than 43 courses Hillsdale offers. On the constitution, the Roman Republic, the American founding genesis, the Second World War and more, all build the same way, taught properly, not dumbed down. I couldn't recommend Hillsdale courses more highly. Go to Hillsdale.edu/trigger to enroll for free. That's Hillsdale.edu/trigger. Let's talk about, because in the Polionic Wars, because to me, that seemed like the last, shall we just say, hurrah for France itself, this chance to be a global power? In retrospect. In retrospect, absolutely. Because they didn't think that at the time, of course. Nor did anybody else, I think. Yes, I think you're right. France, that time, sorry, I'm interrupting you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You are there in the UE, so you should be talking about that. We're interrupting you. France had, by far, the largest population in Europe, 20 million people, that was a double of the population of Britain, larger than Austria, about the same as Russia. General De Gaulle said that he wanted a France of 100 million people. I think I did a rough calculation once. If the French population from the late 18th century had grown at the same rate as the British, France would have a population of 180 million, which you might say is sort of natural. It's twice the size of Britain. So if we have 70 million people, the French could certainly have 150 million, but they haven't. But the reasons why are somewhat mysterious, but everybody else was doubling their population, the French stopped having babies, or stopped having so many. And that may be an effect of the revolution, maybe an effect of the Napoleonic Wars, but whatever the reason it happened. So France is limited. France is super power status partly because, for demographic reasons, by 1870, when they fought Germany, Germany had had an equal population with France. 20 years later, it had a much larger population than France. And so France's power, insofar as power depends on people. And in those days, and perhaps even now, to a logic said, it still does, France was evidently undeclied. But so you could say that the Napoleonic Wars was the last chance for France to be the global hegemonic power. If they'd kicked us out of India, which Napoleon wanted, if they'd defeated the Russians, if they'd set up a kind of European imperial federation, then that would have been it. So the old joke says we'd all be speaking French. And France, in some ways, was a much better place than Britain to be the great global power, because culturally, it was regarded as superior. The French language in the 18th century was the international language. So why was the 19th century, in a sense, the British century, rather than the French century, and it could have been under Napoleon, it could well have been. So why didn't Napoleon win? Well, many French people at the time later said, because he tried to do too much. After Britain never tried to conquer Europe or in the conquer the globe, Napoleon, in a sense, tried to conquer everything. You can't do it that way, as the Americans have realized in recent years. So maybe Napoleon did too much. One thing he couldn't do was to invade Britain. How did he manage to do that? Then he would have won. Well, he was actually talked down in Britain, wasn't he? Well, if we go back to, we often think that Nelson at Trafalgar prevented an invasion, but in fact, he'd already given up the invasion plan by then. There was a huge army all along the Channel Coast, and he built lots of invasion boats, barges, and so on. So he was already for this, and just said, well, okay, I want the French fleet has to come sailing up the Channel and escort us over, it's only 20 miles, and then we'll be in London, and England will be dead. See, more or less, put it. But then the navy never would, his navy, his admiral, Ville Nerve, then it's too dangerous. If we try and sail up the Channel, we'll get sunk, so we're not going to do it. So Napoleon, sort of peak, says, all right, then I'm going to go and invade Austria instead. But that was the closest we've ever got to being invaded by the French formally. They came pretty close on quite a number of occasions in the previous hundred years. Because the point was made to him, was it not that, okay, you can invade England, and maybe you might even win, but then what? Yes, that's true. Well, one of his generals Bernadotte, who was pretty shrewd and who later became King of Sweden, so he was one of those who did well out of the whole business. It did say that he said, "If there's an invasion of England, you have to lead it." Because if anyone else leads it, that means they'll be greater than you. So you have to lead it. But if you lead it and it fails, then that's you, you're screwed. But I think he would have probably given it a try, because he was a risk taker. People must have told him not to invade Russia, but he did. He must have been told it was dangerous to invade Egypt, but he did that too. So I think he would have taken the chance. And what do we know about Napoleon? What do we know about his character who he was? Because there's a lot of mythology that's been written about him and spoken about him. What was that film? I don't know if you saw it. I did. It's not really about Napoleon. It's just big pitch battles and some, there's battles. There's a lot of battles. And then on the island, sort of keeling over at the end of the movie, you know. Well, the thing, I mean, I didn't like it very much, and it's understood that you did. And for all the reason you say, but the other thing that annoyed me was that everyone was much too old. Napoleon was what if, getting on for 50 or 40s, I think Robespierre was shown as being about 50. These were all met in their 20s and 30s. It explains their behavior. Yeah. It's fascinating when we talk about history, just to understand how much we don't understand how young people were. You know, the American founders, late 20s, early 30s. Yeah. These great men who founded a nation, just like kids basically by our standards. Indeed. Well, England was the same age as Napoleon. They were both young. It was young. Robespierre was young. Even Louis XVI was fairly young, 30-something. But yeah, we kind of tend to think of people as older. Well, of course, our leaders tend to be fairly young nowadays. But Napoleon as a personality, well, one historian said he was a walking laboratory of neuroses. I mean, he wasn't French. He was Corsican, of course, as we know. His first language was Corsican, of a dialect of Italian. Whether he ever really liked France, I wonder. He was said to a French military college at a very young age, because his mother had slept with the French governor of Corsica, supposedly. And then it turned out that he wasn't really – he was barely a gentleman in a military college full of aristocrats. I mean, he wasn't very happy there. There's even a story that he was advised he might think of joining the Royal Navy. I mean, our Royal Navy. So, I mean, I think probably I was feeling he regarded the French as a resource to be used. When he made his son king of Rome, he wanted to be emperor like the Holy Roman Emperor, like Charlemagne, not a French rule, really, a European ruler. So, I think, you know, France was, okay, a big rich country good for his ambitions, but not – I don't feel it was something that he – a country that he felt very strongly emotionally attached. So, he wasn't a French nationalist. He was someone who saw France as a vehicle through which to achieve his personal ambitions. And one of the things you tend to find with people who are very, very good at something is they tend to like to do it a lot. Yes. Was the reason that he invaded so many different countries partly because he was a great general and he loved war and he loved winning. He certainly loved winning. He was a very good planner. I think that's what he was mainly. I don't think he was – I mean, I'm not an expert on this, but I don't think he was a great battlefield commander in a way that Wellington was. The Wellington was also a very good planner, but you know there's this saying Amitus talked about tactics, professionals talked about logistics. When Napoleon was very good at organizing and that he was – Was it not him that said an army march is on his stomach? Possibly, yeah. That would kind of explain that. Yes. But, yes, I suppose he was something that – that was the solution to his problems. Yes. If you got a problem then war is the way to solve it. So, in the case of the British, yes, in the case of the Russians, yes, in the case of the Spanish and Vade Spain, if they're being awkward. And the assumption is that you will win and that will be the end of your problems. And I think there may have been something else, which was that although he called himself Emperor and although he ate the style of, you know, the archaic style of the Holy Roman Empire and he surrounded himself with real aristocrats and he married a Habsburg. You couldn't do much better than that. I mean he always knew that he was an upstart. And I think – at least I sort of guess this is a not a hypothesis based on no particular evidence – that there wasn't really a place where he could stop. You know, he couldn't sort of settle down and say I'll live the rest of my life as Emperor and, you know, happily hunting and whatever. You couldn't do that. I mean he said somewhere, you know, if I'm not feared, then I'm not safe. What's that effect? So I think that there was not – he didn't know how – one of his – one of the historians, one of the – he didn't know how to stop. He didn't know how to make peace. And maybe there was no way he could do it. Because as soon as he looked weaker, then he would be – he would be overthrown. You know, he couldn't rely on the – he couldn't be like the Habsburgs or like the Bour walls or even like the – they had a variance in Britain because he was only over there as a – in a sense as an expedient. So he wants his son to succeed, never did. He didn't have few did, which shows that he did have – there was a dynastic, you know, there was a lot of support for an Napoleon. But I think he could never be sure that he would survive peace. But what would you do with the army? You know, as long as there's a war, you can always have the army somewhere else. They can be paid for by others. What happens when the war ends? You know, it did destabilize France. And it was a war that ultimately defeated him. And of course, we can talk about the Battle of Waterloo, which I'm sure we will do. But it was also his invasion of Portugal, wasn't it? Yeah. That was his ultimate undoing really. That was the beginning of the end. Well, what do you call the Spanish-Alsa? You know, he invades Portugal and he invades Spain. And they – well, I think this is true. At least I've written it, so I'm hoping it's true. The French lost as many men in Spain as they did in Russia. What? Over a long period, of course. Really? Yeah. Like half a million men or something like that. Something like that. Wow. Because, of course, the most of the men they lost in Russia were not French. Or at least very many of them were. They were Poles, Germans, Italians and so on. You know, it was an international army. In Spain, it was largely French. And, you know, they were fighting a very bloody and nasty guerrilla war with the Spanish, as well as fighting Wellington. It was sort of popping out of Portugal, fighting a few battles and popping back again. And it was a drain on their strength. I'm going to be honest with you. I used to think grilling was simple. Meat goes on. Meat comes off. You look vaguely competent in front of your mates. Jobs are good. And then I tried to grill anything that wasn't a burger or a steak. My frustration before Hexclad was that while the actual meat takes 20 minutes, scraping the grill afterwards takes 45. At some point, I stopped inviting people over for barbecue because I couldn't face the cleanup. Turns out the problem isn't you. It's the grill. Standard grates were never designed for anything smaller than a steak, which is why your prawns end up in the colds and your salmon ends up in free pieces. Hexclad solved this with their barbecue collection. The grill pan combines a searing power of stainless steel, the durability of cast iron and non-stick underneath, so nothing wields itself to the surface. It's perforated, so heat and smoke still get to the food and you still get that proper grilled flavour. But your veggies, your seafood, your fish, none of it is falling through the grates anymore. If you want more control over delicate stuff, there's a grilled topper, which gives you a full flat surface for things like fish or thin cuts that fall apart the second you try and flip them. And if you want the whole setup at once, there's the barbecue bundle, the grill pan plus a hybrid cutting board and carving set. So you're not running back into the kitchen every 5 minutes. Over a million customers, more than 50,000 5 star reviews, Gordon Ramsay uses this at home and in his own restaurants. And that man is not easily impressed. Every piece comes with a lifetime warranty, so you're not replacing this next summer. Don't spend another season fighting your grill. For a limited time, all audience gets 10% off with our exclusive link. Head to Hexclad.com/trig. That's H-E-X-C-L-A-D.com forward slash trig. Tell them trigonometry sent you. And one of the interesting things in terms of the mythology for our generation and perhaps younger people as well who've not studied history thoroughly as most of us haven't, partly because of the way history is taught nowadays. Is you come away with this sort of, there's this popular idea of the French as the sort of cheese eating surrender monkeys, this is the kind of phrase that sucks sticks and peoples. But of course, people don't realize, by the time of the beginning of World War II, the French had been the people who'd had one of the most powerful armies in the world consecutively for several wars. And what happened in 1939 was a colossal shock to everybody, not just others, but the French themselves. Yes, yes. Yeah, I mean, this idea, which I think many people do have who have a superficial knowledge, which is the French didn't fight in 1939, 1940 is not true. They did fight and they had large casualties, much larger than Britain did. And of course, the resistance continued to resist and so on. But yeah, the, I mean, France was a military nation and you can still sort of see that, to some extent, on the 14th of July or the 11th of November when they have parades down the Shons in Easy, you can see that a bit like us, we like the idea of a military pomp and all that. You might say, "Well, we've both allowed us to be rather hollowed up because we don't want to spend the money on it." But no, you know, welling turn and so on would never have thought of the French as a non-military nation. In fact, they would have thought of them as above all an aggressive military nation. And that's why British politicians were so scared of the French. We're so low. Right up until the end of the 19th century, they were afraid of France invading. One reason why we didn't build a channel tunnel, and I was told by a director of the channel tunnel companies, it was technically feasible to have built a channel tunnel in the 1880s, was that the war, the war ministry in Britain said we can't risk the French invading through a tunnel. Frankly, probably a good decision given that the Germans could have invaded through that time, a few decades later. I was curious about why it was that this great military nation of France was so vulnerable to the German invasion in 1914. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's try non-1930. Because, I mean, there are a few different things. One is the Germans could come up with, you know, they used the radio very well, they used tanks very well, they used mobile, war maneuver very well. But another thing that I understand is French society was very demoralized by the internal battle between the communists and the fascists within France. Is that fair assessment as well? France was more divided politically than Britain was, that's true. They're probably not more divided than Germany was. I remember the great German historian, Sir Richard Evans, saying that something like, if you think France was demoralized in 1939, you should have seen Germany. I mean, Hitler's power was fragile in 1939. And it was only because they defeated France, that Hitler suddenly becomes the invulnerable, great national genius and so on. And, you know, the army would have kicked Hitler out, had there been any reverse. And Hitler, I think, knew that. But what about the French? Well, I think there was some demoralization. I think there had been a feeling ever since the First World War that France could not go through that again. You know, the French had had twice the losses that we had in the First World War. And it was demoralizing enough for Britain, you know, that huge peace movements, a lot of pacifists, a determination to appease Germany in order to avoid another war. And therefore I, for many people are a kind of terrible acceptance to say, well, we knew this was going to be a disaster, and now it's a disaster. So therefore we have to, we have to stop fighting. I mean, there were plenty of people in Britain who would have said that too, and it not been for Churchill, probably what we would have done. But I think it was also that the Allies and indeed the Germans were preparing for a repeat of the First World War. One of my colleagues once told me which I was surprised at, it's always stuck in my mind, the Germans were using more steel for making barbed wire in 1939 than they were for making tanks, because almost everybody was expecting a repeat of trench warfare. And that's what the French were doing. That's what we were doing. So they were spread, the army was spread along this line from, from Holland down to the, the Maginot line. And the Germans decided, the German army, not Hitler, decided that if there was going to be a repeat of the First World War, it would also be a repeat of German defeat. And therefore they had to do something that would cut this war short. And that was the so-called Blitzkrieg, which was an improvisation. I mean, they'd almost done it in 1918. So you might think, well, shouldn't people have expected the same thing again, but they didn't. But you know, the German breakthrough in March 1918 had almost broken the Allied line, and almost forced the British to do a done Kirk in 1918. And in 1939 or 1940, as you say, they had better tanks, they had radios, they had all that. Whereas the French, who had the best tanks in the world relied on flags to communicate between them. It wasn't a terribly good idea, but radios often didn't work anyway. But the Germans concentrated their forces in one place. So one French general said, we, you know, we had 500 groups of three tanks, and the Germans had one group of 500 tanks. And so they punched through the line where no one was expecting it, where they thought it was impossible, you know, through the Ardenne Forest, tanks can't go through the trees. So we all know that they can't detect there. So they ignored all the warning signs, and that's where they did attack. And the Allies, who could have perhaps bombed them, didn't too late. And then they never recovered. So the British fought, but they were always fighting a losing battle. And then, as you say, there were plenty of people in France who said we should never have started this war. You know, the real enemy of the communists, not the fascists, we're there, in fact, we quite like them. So what we have to do is to do a deal with Hitler. And that, of course, is what, what happened and had it not been for the gold and Churchill. Perhaps that's how the whole thing would have ended. Well, it's one of the things I mentioned about the communists and the fascists. I mean, people don't realize how many fascists there were across Europe in the 1930s, not just in Germany, in France, in southern Europe, in Eastern Europe, all over the place. The fact I'd always like about this is I think one of the last divisions defending the Reichstag was SS Charlemagne, which was full of French Nazis. Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting to me. One question that we've never really talked about in the show, which I think would be interesting in the context of France and World War II, is what do you think was the impact of the French resistance on World War II? How significant was it? How damaging was it to the Germans? Not very except in the sense that it made the Allied invasion less bloody. So the French resistance was able to do a lot of damage in 1944 to German communications. A facility of D-Day? Yes, a facility of D-Day. And what happened after D-Day? And also the invasion of Provoz as well. So the Machiae had been armed mainly by the British. I mean, they were organized and were ready to come out into the open. So what they'd been doing before then was good for French morale and perhaps bad for German morale. I don't know, probably didn't make all that much difference, but producing underground newspapers, having radio broadcasts, all that helps to keep spirits up. But as somebody said, it doesn't actually kill any Germans. And so what really counted, I think, was the mobilisation in 1944. And therefore it saved a lot of Allied lives. And it almost certainly shortened the war a bit, but I don't think you could say it was a major element in the war. But what it certainly did do was to help France to see itself and be seen by others as still a great power. And one of the victors, you know, Churchill was very keen on that too. So France gets a permanent seat in the United Nations and has an occupation zone in Germany and so on. So this desire to remake France is a great power. As an ally, Britain and the resistance made that seem plausible. I think that was the important thing. And of course, it later on helps to go to come back and save France from the possibility of another civil war over Algeria. And I think to go was the evidently was the great figure of 20th century France and the resistance was, as I think he probably saw it, was really a vehicle for him to be the savior of the nation. And people often talk about Vichy France. What was Vichy France? And was it essentially a Nazi state? But how much support for For the Nazis, what's the first? Quite a lot. Because Marshall Peta, who was the great French here of the First World War, or one of them, is one of those who think we have to do a deal with Germany. We've lost. And the patriotic thing is to make the best of your defeat. As I said, plenty of people in Britain who thought say, so you can imagine-- you can sort of imagine, if you wanted to write a sort of historical novel about this, you could imagine the Duke of Windsor coming back as a puppet monarch with David Lloyd George as collaborating Prime Minister and Churchill in exile in Canada or somewhere. And what the French had, therefore, was a war hero telling them that they had fought bravely, but they'd lost. And that what they had to do was to make the best of their situation, reform the nation. That was where the fascists came in. It was reform the nation meant hammering the left, anti-Semitism, and discipline, sort of boy scouts or stuff. And much of the Catholic Church was very keen on this too. It was, indeed, a consciously counter-revolutionary movement. They didn't have a monarch, but they had Marshall Peta, who was the next best thing. And a lot of them were people who were monarchists who would have liked to have a monarch in France. And who thought that it had all gone wrong in 1789. That's when France had started to go to the dogs. And they were going to put France back on the path it should have been on, and they never had a revolution. And if Hitler would help them to do that, then that was fine. So they were fascists, but they weren't all fascists. Many of them were old fashioned reactionary patriots. Well, some of the old fashioned reactionary patriots were in the resistance, too. So it was often a choice you had to make. If you hated the Germans enough, you would go into the resistance. If you didn't terribly hate the Germans, you might end up on the side of Hissie. And quite a number of people went from one side to the other, including François Mietheult. As you may know, although he ended up socialist president, he had been on the far right in his youth. He was decorated by Marshall Peta. He was a junior minister, I think, or at least had some sort of official position in Hissie. And then when he realized, honorably, if you like, that they were going to lose, he got in touch with De Gaulle and said, obviously, you're the man I want to do. I want to serve you now. And you know, I'm putting it in a rather sarcastic way and you're smiling. But it was possible to make that decision in a perfectly honorable way. You could say, I trusted Peta, and now I realized that that was not the right way to go. And so I'm going to join the resistance. A lot of pinch of people did that. I never thought I'd be the man to change your mind about underwear. And yet, here I am on a politics podcast about to do exactly that. I'm talking about sheath, s-h-e-a-t-h, sheath.com. It's underwear built around the dual pouch system. What that means in plain English, everything stays where it should be. No sticking, no chafing, no shifting around mid-sentence while trying to maintain an era of gravitas. The fabric breeds the design separates. There is apparently a technical term for what this creates. And that term is zen-like separation. Which sounds ridiculous and is also completely accurate. It was developed by a veteran on his second tour, which means it was designed and the conditions where comfort was not a luxury. Over 10,000 5 star reviews from people who are not messing about. And I'll be honest, the difference to my day-to-day comfort is bigger than I'm comfortable telling you about on a politics podcast. If you know, you know, go to sheath.com. That's s-h-e-a-t-h.com. Use code trigonometry at checkout for 20% off. First pair comes with a full money back guarantee. So there's no reason not to try them. Sheath.com. Once you sheath, you won't go back. Sheath.com. And what was that water shed moment where people realize, hang on, maybe it's not a good idea to be pro-vishy? Yeah. Well, I think there'll probably a number. I mean, the first thing was when Britain fought on. Because the fishy view was Britain with surrender. You know, we had to surrender first, if you like, because otherwise the British would surrender. And they would be the ones doing the deal with Germany. On our backs, that was the widespread view. You know, they burnt Joan of Arc. They'll screw us again. [LAUGHTER] So the British didn't surrender. Oh, that's all could. And then, of course, when the Americans come into the war, you start thinking, oh, well, are the Germans really going to win after all? And then when the German attack on Russia gets bogged down, you think, well, after all, things are not going terribly well for the Germans. And then in 1942, the Germans invaded unoccupied France. And so in that case, you think, well, so what was the point of this at all? OK, for most people, it's a way you just have to carry on with your life, not many people are heroes. But some people do say, well, this is where we really have to take a stand. And you do find people joining the resistance. Because also, there was a spectre of Waterloo, wasn't there, where they were still quite sore. They got their asses handed to them. Yes, they were. And they were also quite sore about Dunkirk. Because here we are. This is the British once again, leaving us in the lurch. So I mean, one France French trope, if you like, is the British leave you in the lurch. Ungrateful buses. That was what we supposed to stand to the last man at Dunkirk, just because they got their asses handed to them. Exactly. Well, typical, because I'm going to say-- Well, finally-- well, I say finally, not really funny. One reason why the French sent their best troops in 1939 up into Belgium, which was the wrong thing to do, as we know, because the Germans are going to attack in a different place, was because they were afraid the British would do a runner. So the commander-in-chief of French Army says, OK, we're going to send our best troops there, because we know what the British nearly did in 1980. They nearly ran away then. So they'll run away again. So we have to send our best troops and make sure the British don't run away. But they did, of course, as the French sort. They did run away. They ran away at Dunkirk. The French were heroically holding off the Germans, while the British were getting on their boats. There's a famous Vichy cartoon that shows a British officer punching a French soldier in the face at Dunkirk to keep him off the boats. It's the British who are getting on the boats, not the French. Of course, that wasn't true. And, of course, Brexit, for some people, is another way in which the British let the French down. You know what? Do you need to be-- You almost brought me to the point of having sympathy for the French, but I think that is-- That is rapidly evaporated in the last two minutes. Well, if Dunkirk, the British Army might well not have escaped at Dunkirk, had the French not, in fact, sacrificed themselves in holding off the Germans. And I think-- so you could imagine why many French soldiers and politicians thought, well, we did our bit, and the British didn't. And the thing-- one of the things that really annoyed them-- well, annoyed is that they saw the British as refusing to commit the RAF to the battle in France. And that, in a sense, is true, though it would have been no good. Well, Churchill knew, though. Churchill knew the France was lost. And we were going to-- he knew Britain had to defend it. Well, he was told this by-- Ireland. He was told that by the chief-- you know, the commanders of the RAF. They said, if you send the RAF to France, we're going to lose it. And then we'll lose the war. But I mean, quite a lot of the RAF was sent to France. And after Dunkirk, more troops were sent to France, and then had to be withdrawn again. But if you were French, if you were a Frenchman who had a few doubts about the British Alliance, if you did remember Joan of Arc or all the other stuff, war to Lewin, then you'd say, we knew we couldn't trust the British. They were willing to fight to the last Frenchman, just as they were in the First World War. We're not going to do that this time. We're not going to be the mugs this time. We're not going to get our sons killed for the sake of British prophets or the British Empire. We're going to do the sensible thing and make peace with. The Germans were, after all, not all that bad. Not as bad as the British anyway. 'Cause at least the Germans are honorable. I'm not my view of this. I'm speaking of it as a Vichy. There's a patchy on it. The Germans are not to, 'cause at least the Germans fight fair. Whereas the British are all new. Well, actually, the history of World War II doesn't quite bear that statement now. Don't get me back in 1939, 1940. Quite, quite, quite. I suppose the interesting question moving back to the present language is to what extent that Vichy resistance split informs French politics to this day. When you mention it to run, I imagine there are hundreds of people at a political level, but millions of people further down that whose views and ideologies come from that and to inform their views today. Today, but 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 foreign asset now, the Rallimone asset now, is its association with Vichy for many, for many people in France. So, I mean, my wife, my co-author, would say, you know, I would never vote for Le Pen. And if I say, well, why, you know, she seems alright, because, you know, what her father was, what, who these people were? These were the people who collaborated, these were the Vichy people, or their grandchildren, or their great-grandchildren, and the French have long historical memories. So, I think it does still, so we shall see, if 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. The people for whom it was the defining experience, of course, are largely no longer with us. You know, the people who remember it, or who remember their parents remembering it, they're all, they're going. So, I mean, younger people are supposed to be much more willing to support Le Pen than older people. And to what extent is your wife's concern understandable instinctively, but inaccurate factually, and to what extent is it factual? You know, being someone's grand daughter doesn't mean or daughter doesn't mean you have their views. I mean, when I first met De France, she's now a long time ago. It was still a very clear thing. You know, you could, I had friends who, you know, I had a friend whose aunt had had had had a full little love with the German airman. And after the war, she'd had to leave Paris. Didn't come back to 20 years. And they all knew that, the neighbors knew that. And so this was a very present memory. Of course, all that's long gone. But nevertheless, there still are, you know, there are family traditions. There are, one is Catholicism. So, Catholicism, Catholics tended to be conservative. And the Catholic church tended to support Vichy because of hatred of Communism, of atheism, what they saw as, you know, revolutionary tradition, which was anti-Christian. That was, that was a big divide at least until the 1970s. I mean, I think the, you know, you could, I used to show my students a map of French election results in the 1970s, compared with a map of support for the French Revolution in the 1790s. And they were almost exactly the same. So you could say, you know, for a very, very long time, there were political cultures which affected whole regions. I think that's really largely gone, as it has here, really. But the next election will show it one way or the other. I guess what I'm asking Robert, sorry, is something slightly different, which is, it's not that you're going on too much. I just want to dig into this thing because here in Britain and elsewhere around the world, you know, we don't, we most of us don't understand what's happening in other countries. We just get given this like slogan in the newspaper. And we go, oh, that's what that is. We don't know. Right. Is it fair to say that the front national is the ideological descendant of Vichy France? Ideological. I don't mean, well, linear biologically. I mean, ideologically. Are these the people who would collaborate with fascists today if France was invaded? That's kind of what I'm getting. Oh, that's a very good question. There is certainly, there is that element. Certainly. Yeah. Which is one that is, you know, is visible and active in French politics in a way that it's really, the British government is really very, very marginal. At least it was until recently. So there are, there are, there is that element. There's also a traditional Catholic element. But for a lot of people now, it's, as in most, let's say most countries, it's a question of who you think will, will be the best government. And I mean, a lot of it's now a sort of visceral dislike of Macron, which is, which is odd. I mean, on in a way, you know, he's, he's a rather annoying chap, I think, for many people. But, you know, he's not, he's kind of politically not very definable. He's kind of, he's kind of colorless politically. He's not right wing or left wing. Yeah, most, many people in France seem to absolutely love Macron. He's like, they're here. Starmer. A bit like here. Starmer. Yeah. But I understand why people we hate someone like that because they see them as presiding over the continued decline of the country without having any of their own views or implement policies. The reason I'm getting into this is just very interesting. If you look at the right wing populist parties elsewhere, say in Britain, right Nigel Farage is clearly ideologically the descendant of the people who would fight the fascists. Yes, clearly, right. Marine Le Pen ideologically is the descendant of who? Well, I think you'd have to say that it, the French often talk about political families, which is a not idea. It's partly because French political parties are very fluid and they're constantly changing their names and so on. But there's this idea that there are political families. And if there is a political family that to which Le Pen belongs apart from her own, the Le Pen family, it does include the people who would have collaborated. Not only because of their visceral hatred of communism. Okay, that you might say, well, is that still there? No, not necessarily. But I mean, simply because the communist menace is no longer there. But there are people who who tend to see the solution to problems as authoritarian government, who blame a lot of problems on immigrants. Okay, well, a lot of us do. Not all problems, but some problems. But there's a spectrum of between people who say, well, I don't really like to see people publicly pray in the street in Paris. People on my limbs. Muslims. I don't like to see, yeah, I don't like to see Muslims publicly playing in Paris. But otherwise, you know, I've got Muslim friends and neighbors. I don't, I don't mind. And then there are the people who say these people are the enemies of France. They should all be expelled or, you know, whatever. There's a whole, as we know, there's a whole spectrum. And a lot of that spectrum all will support Marine Le Pen. It's not only about migration. It's also about, obviously, things like taxation. It's also, as you say, this sense that the country is on the slide and we need somebody, the Farage phenomenon is in some way similar. We need somebody who will break the rules if necessary and get things done. The French don't talk about the blob, but there's the same sense that, you know, of a state that doesn't work. I think in a way that Le Pen and her party have tried to normalize themselves. It's not, it's not clear how, whether that will work or not. If it does, then you might see the same sort of thing that you see with, with Maloney in Italy. In other words, someone who comes to power, being accused of being a neo-fascist, and then turns out not to be very different from any, any central right politician. So it may be that Le Pen will get elected and will turn out to be not very different from any central right politician. The thing that worries me is rather different. I mean, my wife, I think, would be viscerally resistant to any thought. How many people in France feel the same? And if Le Pen is elected, to what extent will there be violence in the streets? Would there be strife, would there be strikes, would there be resistance from within the civil service, and so on? I think probably to quite a large extent. That just sounds like France now, Robert. Well France, all the time. But much more, much more so. And you know, we are both in our early 40s, but I think my entire Agile Life people have been predicting the Le Pen of one form or another is going to become, is going to be elected. I haven't happened so far. Do you expect that it will at the next election? I honestly don't know, because I think it depends on how people, at the very last minute, decide to vote in the second round. Whether they're going to say, well, I don't like a lot of this right wing stuff, but I certainly don't want the left. It also depends on who the other candidate is. If it comes down to a fight between Le Pen and Melauchon, then I. Melauchon is a communist. Sort of. I mean, he's sort of Jeremy Corbyn, multiplied by. I'm out of it. So I think I was right when I said communist based on that description, yeah. He's a democratic socialist, doesn't he, Corbyn? Yes, exactly. What worries me a bit about France and about Britain, and both the two countries which I feel are strong attachment, is that they're both heading the same direction towards a polarisation of politics between a right wing coalition, which is almost certainly going to disappoint its followers. And the possibility of a left-wing coalition, in our case, Greens, Nationalists, Slim Dems, Labour, who will cause chaos. And in the French case, you could have a Melauchon-led coalition of the left against. lapenn with stop lapenn as it's slogan. And I think in that case, you're heading for intervery dangerous waters. And we've been talking about history and how history reflects on the present. But in a odd way, the histories of France and Britain are so different. And 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. But with the polarised 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. And so what you get, what you might get is in fact, a succession of weak and constantly changing governments, sort of cobbled together centrist, relying sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, which we've had in France ever since Macawall came to power, really. Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on, absolutely fascinating. What it's done is confirmed all our prejudices about the freight. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. It's given me a basis for my prejudice. But the final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Before Robert answers the final question, add the end of the interview and make sure you go to triggapod.co.uk where you will be able to see this. Why doesn't there seem to be more anger from England towards France for the steady stream of small boats at France lets through? What are the specific cultural traits of French peoples that distinguish them from their Anglo-Saxon and other counterparts? So one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Oh gosh. Well, I think we're talking about it a bit, but I've always been a bit suspicious, a bit suspicious of rewilding, meaning letting everything go, letting everything go to pot, not looking after land, not looking after anything and say, oh well, this is rewilding, it's just letting all the weeds and the brambles grow. And 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. We have to manage, I think we have to manage the place where we live, we have to manage the countryside and just say, well, we're going to let it go back to nature. It's a recipe, as I think we've seen for, a lot of disaster. It's the same in every country that it's been done, I think. There we go. Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much. Make sure to join us over on SubStack where you get to ask Robert your questions. Professor Tooms is still a supporter of the Conservative Party. How does he square that with their failure, often deliberate Patrick and insert, to make anything meaningful out of Brexit? [BLANK_AUDIO]