00:00Elizabeth, welcome back to the programme. Good to see you.
00:03What's the atmosphere like there? You live there? I mean, how does it feel?
00:07I live right next to the Champs-Élysées. There were marchers down my own street.
00:12I could see them from my windows, and luckily they were the students, and they were peaceful,
00:17and seemed to be enjoying themselves.
00:19But the atmosphere, basically, in Paris, two days later, is a sort of horrible hangover,
00:28because not only was the destruction terrifying, you know, you had this complete irresponsibility
00:35of people torching restaurants, which were on the ground floor of five- or six-storey buildings.
00:41So nobody knows whether the apartments above those, in those old classical Paris buildings,
00:45are safe for habitation. And the looting and the lawlessness is something that has terrified people.
00:54But also the, you know, the end of reign of President Macron, which, in which nobody believes
01:01anything he says anymore. He addressed the nation the day before yesterday, on Sunday night,
01:07and it was just words. There was a feeling that he had lost the plot, basically.
01:12So a combination of politicians who don't seem to be quite getting the point,
01:16and terrible optics and terrible economics, your correspondent quite rightly said,
01:22that France can't afford to pay for all those repairs that need to be done,
01:27because our foreign debt is suddenly much more expensive to service,
01:30and it has risen by 1,000 billion, 300 million euros, 300 billion, 3,300 billion euros,
01:44which means that the interest rates now are higher than most countries in Europe.
01:50We are paying more than one base point than Italy to borrow money that is out there
01:56and needs, you know, with a debt that needs to be serviced. So it's a perfect storm in a bad
02:00way.
02:00Okay, well, you've set out many of the problems. What are the solutions?
02:04Would it really make any difference whether any other party, left or right, was in charge?
02:11Well, suppose we had a leader, and I'm not saying which leader, but, you know,
02:16apart from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the hard left, a president of France on board,
02:21who said that there were instances where violence was legitimate, so I don't think he would be solving problems,
02:27but everybody else. If they took a leaf from what Georgia Maloney said about the riots that happened
02:33not quite as bad in Milan last weekend, which was both sort of making the difference
02:40between people who had legitimate complaints and the fact that Italy would not tolerate Barbary in its streets,
02:46and if it was a new broom and a new face, it would, it might help.
02:53I've seen time and again countries change, not just France.
02:56I mean, I remember when Reagan was elected after Jimmy Carter, and sadly America was optimistic again.
03:02And it's not impossible, but it also requires sort of a long, hard look at how France is policed
03:09and how the French police, who are competent, have been hamstrung
03:13because the government was afraid that there would be fatalities.
03:16And there's a moment when you have to take risks.
03:20Anna-Elizabeth, I know we'll talk again in coming days, but for the moment,
03:24thank you very much. Anna-Elizabeth Moutet, the French journalist and commentator in Paris.
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