Something unusual happened last week: I visited a place without knowing anything about it. I hadn’t googled to see whether it was considered nice or if there was anything for the children to do. My wife and I just needed a place to crash en route to somewhere else, as the motorway hotel where we usually stay at was fully booked. So we ended up in Troyes, a town roughly 100 miles south-east of Paris. And it was lovely. Astonishingly lovely in fact: an extraordinarily well-preserved medieval warren, like a French Bruges but without the tourists. The nicest thing about the experience, though, was the feeling of discovering somewhere. Perhaps I should put down my phone more often.
Troyes, I learned to my amusement when we went out for dinner, is famous for a dish that has become notorious in our family: andouillette. It is one of those dishes that when you order, the waiter stops to ask whether you are sure: “It’s a special flavour. I do not like.” Andouillette is a deeply Gallic sausage; it is made from pork intestines, which gives it what I like to call an “earthy” (read manure-like) flavour. For this reason, it has become known to my wife and children as the “poo sausage”.
Do I really like andouillette, or just what it represents: of being in France, on holiday, abroad? I don’t know, but I certainly admit to a heavy dose of Francophilia. There’s something about France that seems reminiscent of a lost Britain – or perhaps just the one many of us aspire it to be. A place with nice towns, pleasant high streets and functioning public services. It is worth saying, of course, that this isn’t the full picture. France is also a place of gilet jaunes protests, bubbling ethnic tensions and the rise of the far right.
I’m not alone in my Francophilia – at least at a theoretical, idealised level. Across the political spectrum, there has been something of a Gaullist turn of late. Some of this, I am sure, is because of the quiet (but real) influence of A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle, Julian Jackson’s monumental biography of the French general, which has become a favourite in Westminster. Keir Starmer’s former adviser Paul Ovenden read it and wrote in these pages a few weeks ago that Britain needed “a Gaullist leader”. On the other side of politics, Robert Jenrick is a fan too. Now we discover from Will Lloyd’s profile of Ed Miliband in this week’s Easter Special that his aides say the Energy Secretary is pursuing a form of “British Gaullism”.
Jackson’s book is extraordinary for many reasons. A friend of mine who is a French diplomat told me that it is a source of some consternation that the best biography of France’s greatest modern leader was written by a Brit. For me, the book was revelatory about the deeper meaning of politics. As the historian John Bew put it to me recently, politics is not simply about managing disputes, but about “purpose” – a vision of the good life. De Gaulle certainly had his “idea of France”. What is Starmer’s idea of Britain? What are those of his challengers? Whatever else people say about Ed Miliband, few dispute that he has an idea of what the country should look like and the determination to pursue it. There’s something almost Victorian about him sticking around in British politics even after losing the general election in 2010.
At the New Statesman, we do not have one overarching vision of Britain and politics, a creed or dogma. But we do have a certain idea of what a good society looks like: a place of safety and security for all those who live here; home, not for one ethnic or religious group, but for the great multitude that is Britain. In a week that has seen more pain, division, violence and vengeance than usual, this vision of Britain is worth holding on to.
On a lighter note before I leave you for a fortnight, it is striking just how many intricate Easter displays there are in French shop windows, each paying some kind of elaborate homage to the cult of the Easter Bunny. When did the Easter Bunny become so big? I don’t remember it being a “thing” when I was young. Was it? Our shop window this week, meanwhile, was produced by the wonderful Mona Eing and Michael Meißner. Each week, the magazine looks as good as it does thanks to the work of our brilliant creative duo, Erica Weathers and Gerry Brakus. I can’t promise any chocolate in your issue this week, but you certainly have a visual feast of goodies. Dig in, and, as ever, please get in touch with your thoughts – we love to hear them.
[Further reading: Liz Truss is plotting her comeback]
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This article appears in the 25 Mar 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Easter Special
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Subscribe here to commentThe only time I ate andouillettes was nearly 25 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed them (they needed the slight frying pan “burn” on the skins). When I ordered them, the waiter – this was in a place called Le Vieux Moulin, in Chablis – asked me whether I was sure. When I confirmed this, he still asked again, actually telling me I wouldn’t like them.