Press Review: Britain Keeps Calm and Carries On as French Fret Over a Slap

It is a measure of just how much normal life in Britain came to a standstill in recent days that the British defense ministry said only on Tuesday that Russia has moved submarines out of Crimea — as the Sun reported last week. The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II was clearly a historic event of enormous magnitude.The day after the queen was laid to rest in a private burial on the grounds of Windsor Castle, the royal family released for the first time a picture taken of the monarch in 1971. It is an almost haunting image the queen walking up a hillside at Balmoral, her residence in Scotland, regal and quite alone. As the royal family embarks on a further week of mourning, the new prime minister, Liz Truss, is at New York. The British press, though, is taking no holiday from the funeral frenzy, with stories analyzing its every aspect, from the presence of the queen’s favorite corgis to what everybody — particularly the ladies — was wearing.The “cape dress” worn by Meghan, duchess of Sussex, was seen by many as a fitting homage to the queen as the duchess wore a similar dress, in navy instead of black, when she attended a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in honor of Elizabeth’s 92nd birthday. Still, at least one prominent newspaper, the Times of London, took an introspective approach to the duchess of Sussex, asking, “Why the hate for Meghan during mourning period?”The view of all things British from across the English Channel, of course, will always be little different. The George V metro station underneath the Champs-Élysées at Paris was renamed Elizabeth II for the day to honor the late queen.That said, the French views on monarchy have been pretty well known since the king of France before the Revolution, hapless Louis XVI, lost his head in 1793. An online poll from the newspaper Le Figaro found that nearly 53 percent of its readers were “not moved” by the funeral of Elizabeth II. The French, sans doubt, have d’autres chats à fouetter — that is the French expression for having other fish to fry, but it translates as having other cats to whip. And it is a whipping’s contemporary equivalent, namely a slap, that is currently roiling the French political scene.That is because a former French presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has improbably come to the defense of a lawmaker who admitted to slapping his wife.Mr. Mélenchon is not the only politican to have defended the documented faux pas committed by Adrien Quatennens, who belongs to the left-wing populist party La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed.It is the same party that Mr. Mélenchon led in the French parliament between 2017 and 2021. For the moment, this is a quintessentially French brouhaha that pits the partisans of privacy against fervent feminist and anti-domestic violence advocates.Because it is unfolding on the far left side of the political spectrum, it may undercut the left’s legislative clout on social issues and give more power to the center-right: Le Figaro goes so far to say that “l’affaire Quatennens” has “poisoned” the France Unbowed party. That is catnip to the far-right National Rally party, of which Marine Le Pen is notably a member. Like Mr. Mélenchon, Ms. Le Pen has run for the French presidency three times.***The domestic doings of Paris and London have little bearing on the war in Ukraine, even as it appears to be turning in Ukraine’s favor. That the Kremlin packed those Kilo-class subs off to Novorossiysk to dodge potential long-range Ukrainian fire at their usual base in Russian-occupied Crimea is just one sign of that.Successful counteroffensives are under way in the northeast and Kyiv is making steady incursions in the bid to recapture Kherson. On Tuesday, the Guardian reported that Russia has now lost full control of the Luhansk region, which is part of the eastern Donbas. If these strategic gains make Henry Kissinger’s earlier call for Ukraine to cede territory sound like ancient history, not everybody in Europe has gotten that memo. A former Romanian foreign minister, Andrei Marga, says that Ukraine was surrounded by “unnatural borders” and called for it to “cede territory to Hungary” as well as to Romania, Poland, and Russia.Mr Marga also called for America, Russia, Germany, China, and Ukraine to reach an “agreement” on ending the war, but it was the comments on concessions that drew condemnation from Ukraine as well as Romania’s ministry of foreign affairs.Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Hungary of having designs on Transcarpathia, the historical designation for a small region that borders Hungary and that formed part of that country on the eve of World War II.The region is now called the Zakarpatska Oblast. It can be expected that the European Union’s recent warnings that Hungary under the leadership of Victor Orbán can no longer be considered a democracy will help Ukraine bat down any nationalistic posturing from Budapest. __________Correction: Louis XVI was the king of France prior to the Revolution that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy. An earlier edition misstated the historical context.

Press Review: Britain Keeps Calm and Carries On as French Fret Over a Slap

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