The murder of 11-year-old Lyhanna, a child with British ties, has set France ablaze. Her body was found discarded like refuse, and the nation’s rage has turned its gaze not merely on the perpetrator but on the man at the helm: Emmanuel Macron. This is not just a crime. This is a Rorschach test for a republic in decay.
Let us dispense with the obligatory pieties. Every child’s death is a tragedy. But the response to Lyhanna’s killing reeks of something deeper, something putrid. The French, a people who once prided themselves on civilisation, are now baying for blood in the streets. And who can blame them? They sense their world is unravelling.
Consider the parallels to the late Roman Republic, where the murder of a single citizen could ignite civil strife. Clodius’s death, Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon: these were symptoms of a system that had lost its moral compass. Today, France is a republic that no longer believes in itself. Its elites prattle about “vivre ensemble” while the banlieues burn. Its police are stretched thin. Its justice system is a laughingstock. And now, a little girl is dead.
Macron, the technocratic emperor with no clothes, stands exposed. He promised a “Renaissance” but delivered a nation adrift. When he speaks of “European sovereignty”, his subjects see only a president unable to secure his own streets. The gilets jaunes were a warning. This is the final alarm.
The British connection, of course, adds a piquant twist. For decades, the French have looked across the Channel with a mixture of envy and contempt. Now, a child with British roots becomes a symbol of their failure. The irony is not lost on this columnist. The United Kingdom, for all its own troubles, at least retains a semblance of cultural coherence. France, by contrast, has become a patchwork of grievances, a nation of warring tribes united only by their dissatisfaction.
What is to be done? The usual bromides will not suffice. We need a reckoning. France must confront its intellectual decadence: the lazy multiculturalism, the reflexive anti-racism that excuses everything, the endless excuses for criminality. It must look in the mirror and see not a beacon of liberty but a hollowed-out shell. Or, as Gibbon might have observed, its decline will be swift and inglorious.
As for Macron, his trial is a public one. He can either rise to the occasion, channel the fury of his people, and restore order, or he can continue his vapid slide into irrelevance. History will judge him not by his summits with world leaders but by the colour of the blood on his hands. Lyhanna’s ghost demands no less.
