This is Spectator Radio, the Spectator's curated podcast collection.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Isabel Hardman.

With plummeting approval ratings and street protests stretching into their fifth month,

Emmanuel Macron's presidency seems to be going from bad to worse. So what happened

to France's golden child of global liberalism? Plus, our MPs whining too much, and is TV binge

watching becoming an epidemic? First up, where did it all go wrong for Emmanuel Macron?

When he was elected two years ago, France's president was held up as

proof that charismatic centrist politics could beat back the rising tide of European populism.

However, it now seems his only major achievement has been to unite the French people around a

single issue, their distaste for him. In this week's cover story, Jonathan Miller unpacks what went wrong

and what it means for the future of France and Europe. He joins me now, along with Sophie Pedder,

Paris Bureau Chief for the Economist and author of Revolution Francaise, a biography of Macron to discuss.

So Jonathan, we know quite a bit about embattled and incompetent leaders here in Britain,

but you say things are much worse in France. Well, it has to be, it has to be said that Britain

has been through a wrenching period, which I've been observing from France, of debate and contention

and disagreement and argument. But for the most part, it's been conducted in Parliament

or in the press. And when it has been on the street, it's been peaceful. And I'm walking over

here to the spectator officers this morning, there was no whiff of tear gas, nor carcasses of

burned out porches on the streets, nor policemen firing rubber bullets at demonstrators.

In France, on the other hand, I think that there's a certain kind of complacency about the

situation where for 21 weeks in a row, there has been really chaos.

There have been 10 to 12 people killed. There have been

...