Liberté, égalité, désordre: chaos in France

0:01Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. Running a business means you're always reachable until you're not. And the moment you miss that call, a competitor picks it up. That's why this episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. The business phone system built so you never miss an opportunity. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place. Anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, trusted by over 90 ,000 businesses. Set up in minutes on any device. Keep your existing number.

0:39Add teammates as you grow. No IT. No hassle. Quo's built-in AI agent even handles after-hours calls and books appointments. So you're covered around the clock. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo free, plus 20 % off your first six months at Quo.com slash tech. That's qo.com slash tech. This intelligence podcast is sponsored by Back Market, the leading global marketplace for refurbished tech. When the kids need phones, laptops, or tablets for school, buying refurbished tech makes sense for families trying to save money without sacrificing quality. At Back Market, tech costs up to 50 % less compared to new.

1:23All devices have been professionally refurbished and come with a one-year warranty and 30-day return policy. Start saving money. Visit Backmarket.com or the Backmarket app to shop now.

1:38The Economist

1:45Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. And I'm Rosie Bloor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

2:00We'll take a quiet ride in a self-driving taxi in San Francisco, where they're proliferating. Will they take jobs from human cabbies? Maybe not. May just end up another industry where there are different services for the rich and for the not-so-rich. And Jilly Cooper was the queen of bonkbusters. Her books were filled with yearning women, devastatingly handsome men, and a lot of rather steamy sex. Our culture editor celebrates a beloved British author.

2:38But first...

2:46Yet again, France has been plunged into political crisis. On Monday, the country's newly appointed Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu resigned less than four weeks into the job. Despite that, President Emmanuel Macron gave him 48 hours to come up with a plan for next year's budget.

3:10This morning, Lecornu said he hoped for good news after all his consultations and that all the political parties wanted to find agreement. But that deadline is tonight. After a year of extraordinary chaos, Emmanuel Macron may finally be reaching a moment of reckoning. The mood in Paris today is incredibly tense. Sophie Pedder is our Paris bureau chief. There's a really last-ditch effort to get the parties to agree to a plan that would bring stability to the country. This will involve, if it works, concessions from both sides. But it's incredibly difficult because what the left wants, the right doesn't.

3:54And what the right wants, the left doesn't. But these talks are ongoing. Nobody has walked out of them yet. And this evening, we'll find out whether or not this plan has worked. And what happens if it doesn't? Well, I think President Macron doesn't have very many options at that point. He has extended this deadline trying to find a solution as a really last minute. up against the wall solution. If it doesn't work, he will probably have to call fresh parliamentary elections. Now, he doesn't want to do that because last year when he did it in June 2024, his own centrist grouping lost a lot of seats.

4:32And the far right, that's the national rally, Marine Le Pen's party did very well. That's likely to be a similar outcome if he does it again. There is no appetite neither from the president nor from the centrist grouping and nor for that matter on the left among the socialists who only have 66 seats, but they see that they would also be squeezed. There really is no appetite for another election. But I think that the political pressure on him to dissolve parliament and hold snap elections will become irresistible given how much instability France is in and given that he's now lost his fourth prime minister in little over a year.

5:07Sophie, as you say, we've talked about the chaos in France so many times on the show. Just remind us how we got here. We have, and you do sometimes feel you're going around in circles. I think I've rarely seen a week this chaotic in French political life. We had a government appointed on Sunday night. We then had the prime minister resign on Monday morning. We then had one of the ministers who'd only just appointed, resign. This sort of thing does not happen in France, at least not in modern times, and it has been a sorry spectacle. I think you have to go back to last year and the elections of the summer, which were called at the last minute by President Macron after he did very badly at European polls.

5:49And that ended up with a three-way split parliament into three blocks, which are mutually hostile, in which nobody holds a majority. And that has just meant parliamentary deadlock and no party seems willing to make the concessions it needs to sort of form a coalition, a stable coalition that can get on with government business and pass budgets, let alone anything else. So we've had this now going on for over a year. Parliament has brought down two previous prime ministers. The current one who is now trying to do these last minute negotiations, Sébastien Lecarnu, he was the third attempt to try and bring stability.

6:25And it has just been an ongoing series of stalemates and deadlocks in Parliament without any obvious solution. So we've clearly got absolute chaos in the corridors of power. How is this playing out for normal people? Well, I think it's created a lot of uncertainty and that's what business doesn't like and that's what employers don't like and that then feeds through to the job market and the way in which people feel that their own lives are being affected. You have a lot of firms that are just not hiring or a lot of firms that are putting off investment decisions. Ordinary people are saving more.

6:59It's very interesting that France's saving rates has been climbing up, and that generally reflects a sense of uncertainty and nervousness about the future. Things like inflation are relatively low in France, so it's not about consumer prices, but it is about that sense of not knowing what the future holds. And that makes people anxious, it makes people feel nervous, and it's not good for the economy. So what happens next? Well, we'll discover this evening whether or not a plan has been reached between the parties, And if not, and if there are snap elections, if that's what President Macron is forced to do, those would be for Parliament, not for the presidency.

7:34Those two are separate elections in France, and that is part of the French constitution. So he can hold snap parliamentary elections. Those would probably take place within the next couple of months and in all likelihood would lead to the far right doing very well. Now, the big question in France is whether the far right, that's Marine Le Pen's party, can actually by itself secure anything close to a majority. She already holds over 100 seats. You need 289 for a majority in the French lower house. It's not impossible for her to increase her number of seats to something close to a majority. I think it'd be very difficult for her to have one.

8:12But I think that for the first time, we would potentially be looking at a government in France under the far right, plus allies if it can find them. And that would be an absolute first for France. And what about the calls for Macron himself to resign? Well, it's interesting. This used to come only from the political fringes, those sorts of calls. We've now got Édouard Philippe, who is one of his former prime ministers, so a former ally of his, who has indeed called for Macron to go early after holding elections. That was a very surprising call from Edouard Philippe. I think that President Macron is a firm believer in the Fifth Constitution.

8:49It was set up by de Gaulle to bring stability through the office of the presidency. And that's a five-year term which runs until 2027. I think he would want to serve out that five-year term come what may. And a lot of people, not only in his own party, but also on the right and on the left, I mean, François Hollande said he did not want. That's a former socialist president that said that he did not want or think that Macron should resign either. So I think that that is the last thing that President Macron would do unless he was absolutely forced to. Sophie, good to talk to you. Thank you so much.

9:20Thanks, Rosie. Good to talk to you too.

9:37Hello, I'm Edward Carr, Deputy Editor of The Economist. Thank you for listening to The Intelligence. Providing insight into the news that matters is a big part of what we do. I'll be co-hosting a new video show every Thursday with Zannie Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist. It's called The Insider. And our plan is to take you inside the editorial debates that frame our leader lines and each week's cover stories. But every Tuesday, we'll also probe deeper into the areas you care about. My expert colleagues will be launching shows on defence, economics, geopolitics and technology as a chance to bring in guests and get to grips with what's going on.

10:19With these shows, you can not only get to know us, but also send in questions to join in our discussions. The Insider launches tomorrow at 6pm London time, 1pm New York time. Our specialist shows begin with Inside Defence, hosted by Shashank Joshi, our defence editor, next Tuesday. So please add it to your calendars, send in your questions via the new Insider tab on our website, and enjoy the show. Thank you.

10:55I'm inside what to all intents and purposes looks like a normal, if somewhat more high-end, taxi. It's a Jaguar in San Francisco. Callum Williams is a senior economics writer for The Economist. There's one big difference. I'm on my way to my destination and there's no driver sitting with me. and that's because I'm in a Waymo driverless taxi. This kind of cab is taking over San Francisco. By one estimate the company already has a fifth to a quarter of the city's ride share market. This includes companies like Uber and Lyft but doesn't include traditional cabs. Recently Tesla's robo-taxis have joined them although there is still a supervisor sitting in the driver's seat and Zooks which is owned by Amazon will soon also set driverless cars free in the city.

11:44This robotaxi boom raises a familiar question. You're here. Please make sure it's clear before exiting. When technology automates a profession, what happens to human workers?

11:59So, Callum, what is the answer to that question? Are there lots of taxi drivers now out of work in San Francisco? The short answer is no. The data we have on taxi drivers in San Francisco suggests that employment is pretty stable. the number of people taking regular taxis seems pretty stable too. So what seems to be happening is that the rise of robo-taxis has raised overall demand for taxi services in San Francisco. And in particular, what we find is that robo-taxis tend to cater to a lucrative corner of the market rather than to the masses. But all told, the fact that they exist at all is actually just raising overall demand, you say?

12:36It seems to be that way. So you can find data on people working for taxi and the limousine services in San Francisco, that grew by 7 % last year. Total pay in that industry grew by 14 % last year too. So that's pretty encouraging in that sense. And you know, if you're downtown, it can still be pretty difficult to find a yellow cab at peak times. But it's really a question of if you can afford it, and you have the time, then it's a nice idea sometimes to hail a robo taxi. You're suggesting that it's sort of a premium experience. How much more does a robo taxi ride cost. It is a premium experience, at least for now.

13:11So the evidence suggests that it's between 20 and 40 % more expensive than, say, taking an Uber or taking a Lyft. In particular, if you take short journeys on Waymos, they can be particularly expensive. The journey I just took was about 20 minutes long and cost about$26,$27. So reasonably expensive compared with taking an Uber in particular. But you didn't have to have mindless chat with somebody along the way, I guess. That's true. And I think this gets to the core of the market that robo taxis are serving. We think that what's happening is that the people that are using these services are particularly likely to have previously used their private cars.

13:48Now, of course, the advantage of private cars is you're by yourself. You don't have to talk to anyone. The environment's really nice and clean just how you like it. You can listen to your own music. And that actually pretty accurately describes what it's like being in a robo taxi. It's very different from being in an Uber or Lyft, where you don't really know what the environment is going to be like. So it's a bit more expensive, but the service is better. So we think that it's the private car market that Waymo is particularly eating up. And presumably for the early adopter types and the tech obsessed, people just want to take them to take them.

14:19Absolutely. So Waymo makes the argument in a research paper that some people visit San Francisco purely in order to ride Waymos. Now, that's probably true for one or two people. I suspect it's not a big phenomenon, but certainly tourists do come and want to use them. I think the other thing to bear in mind about Waymos, and this gets to the heart of the technology really, is you have to be a particular kind of person or in a particular frame of mind to decide to hail a Waymo. Now, the technology is amazing. However, it's still not perfect. So that means there are a few issues. One is that they often take quite a long time to find you.

14:56If an Uber turns up, they'll just stop in the middle of the street and you can jump in really fast. Waymos really prefer to find somewhere that's really safe and where it can wait for a long time. And so that means that it's quite difficult just to kind of jump into a Waymo very quickly. The other thing is that they're still reasonably conservative drivers. And what you notice driving around San Francisco is that other drivers have cottoned on to the fact that Waymos will tend to give way if there's a battle for space on the road. If you really have to get to the other side of town very quickly, you'd much rather get an Uber or a Lyft, or even better, just hail a cab on the street.

15:29But if you want to have a nice evening trip and you're going to a restaurante, but it doesn't really matter what time you turn up, then it's fantastic to take away. So it really depends both on how much money you've got to spend and also what frame of mind you're in. But early indications all this taken together suggest there's going to be room for both kinds, the human kind and the robo kind. Exactly. Now, at some point, of course, it may be the case that robo taxis are able to significantly cut their prices. Bear in mind though that these companies have made huge investments in the technology.

15:59So that could be quite a long time away. They have to make a lot of money back. And it's also possible that in time, they'll be able to create robotaxi technology that means that they're able to drive as aggressively as a human if you really want it to. But again, you think that's quite a long way off and regulation will presumably make that hard. So at least for a very long time, there's going to be both human taxi drivers and robotaxi drivers serving different segments of the market. Well, for the moment, thanks, Callum, and enjoy your robo rides. Thanks, Jason.

16:47It became known as the Great Bottom Controversy. Catherine Nixie is our culture correspondent. It was 2015 and a book called Riders had just been reprinted, when newspapers suddenly noticed that its cover had been changed. Where once it had shown a man's hand clasping a girl's bottom, now his hand was almost chastely on her lower back. The change was small, the outcry was not. The removal of the buttock-cupping hand was called prudish, totally unsexy and a scandal. The bottom mattered because the author of the book did. It was by Jilly Cooper, a woman who for 50 years offered Britain fine social distinctions, finer bottoms and the chance to use words like buttocks in an otherwise bleak world.

17:45And Britain loved her for it.

17:51Her dirty books, as one critic called them, gained 11 million sales, their own literary category of bonkbusters, and even increasing literary approval. The LRB, a high-minded books newspaper, called her writing Dickensian. Other people went further. Jilly Cooper was less read than revered. She was called a cult, a queen, and last year she even became a Dane. The experience, she said, was orgasmic. The woman who had begun her career as a national scandal never quite became a national treasure. Any author whose work contains lines like, his c**t was rising like some grotesque Italian pepper grinder, could never be cuddled quite that closely.

18:37Nonetheless, her death was felt as a national tragedy. The queen herself paid tribute to her. calling her a legend. Jilly Cooper herself was more modest. When she was asked last year about her future, she replied that she would one day like to write a good book. Partly that sort of thing was pure self-deprecation. Dame Jilly had been born in 1937 into the world of upper-middle-class Middle England, a world in which people had old rectories, young lovers, and pronounced the word forehead to rhyme with horrid, and saw any sort of boasting as really horrid. Even after she had sold all those books, she would describe herself as very stupid, slow, and her first drafts of anything as very boring.

19:26Her later drafts were definitely not. She became known as a writer of sex and horses. Her cast lists featured characters such as Love Rat, a stallion, and Rupert Campbell Black, the handsomest man in England, and a different kind of stallion. Literary snobs sniffed, as she well knew. The literary world, she once wrote, is divided into two sets. People like me who long for a kind word in The Guardian, and people in The Guardian who long for my sales. Generations of schoolgirls read her books less as novels than as manuals, and learnt from them what sort of men are attractive, cats with long legs, What sort of women are unattractive?

20:09Feminists with hairy ones. How to spot a socialist? They have beards and bad breath. And whether you should trust someone with a clean car? Never. It was, in many ways, an odd sort of manual. But then again, there was in those days no other. Julie Cooper had been born into a world of debutantes, balls and de brettes. By the time she was 20, there had been a social revolution and a sexual one, but not a domestic one. Women had a toe in the workplace but still had to be the angel in the house, with, for most, hellish consequences. Her big break came in 1969 when an editor asked her to write an article about married life.

20:46She wrote about mouldy sinks, dust under the bed, and accidentally dyeing her husband's rugger jockstrap pink in the wash. Her characters would be remembered as slutty in the modern sense of the word, and at times they were. But she herself used the word slut in its much older sense, of an inadequate housewife, and in a strange way that was just as much part of her success. Women, she realised, were less having it all than doing it all. As a new wife, she wrote, she had felt on trial, sexually, domestically, socially, and well aware, as she said, that I was inadequate on every count. In her books, her characters are reduced to tears by ravishing men, but they are also reduced to tears by piles of laundry, dirty dishes, and only being able to find their most greying, aged bras.

21:37Jilly Cooper broke the fourth wall of womanhood. She, like the best of lovers, made women feel seen. And, also as with the best of lovers, women responded passionately.

21:54Catherine Nixie on Dame Jilly Cooper, who has died aged 88.