As the G7 descends upon Biarritz, the usual carnival of protest and placard-waving has begun. The French police brace for violence, the streets fill with the angry chants of a continent in crisis. Yet what strikes the discerning observer is not the theatre of dissent, but the cri de coeur behind it: a Europe losing its bearings, a Union fraying at the seams. The yellow vests, the climate radicals, the anti-globalists — they are symptoms of a deeper rot, a loss of faith in the very project of liberal governance.
Meanwhile, Britain stands apart. Not with a swagger, but with a quiet, stubborn stability. While Paris burns with righteous fury and Berlin waffles on immigration, London offers something increasingly rare: a democracy that still believes in itself. The Brexiteers were not merely voting for trade deals; they were voting for national sovereignty, for the idea that a people can govern themselves without supranational supervision. And now, as the G7 leaders pose for photos and the EU stumbles from crisis to crisis, that vote looks prescient.
The protests are not just about Macron’s pension reforms or God knows what. They are about a civilisation that has lost its narrative. Europe has become a bureaucracy, not a beacon. Its intellectuals chatter about post-nationalism while its citizens feel unmoored. Britain, for all its current political squabbles, retains a sense of itself. The monarch still reigns, Parliament still debates, and the people still vote. It is not perfect, but it is ours.
So let the G7 protest. Let the tear gas drift across the French beaches. Britain will watch, steady as the Thames, and carry on. In a world of collapsing certainties, that is a kind of greatness.
