The GuardianUK News & Comment• 1 min read

The people of France are in an extraordinary funk about their future – here’s why | Paul Taylor

Published 3 September 2026, 5:00am

The race to succeed Emmanuel Macron is looming, but rarely has the mood been so gloomy or the lure of extremist solutions so alarming France, as the French travel writer Sylvain Tesson once noted, “is a paradise inhabited by people who think they live in hell”.

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