Last night’s Champions League fiasco in Paris should surprise no one who has watched French public order crumble over the past decade. Dozens of British police officers injured, Scotland Yard demanding answers, and the usual chorus of Gallic shrugs from the Elysee. This is not merely a football riot.
It is a symptom of a civilisation that has forgotten how to police itself. The French Republic, once the arbiter of continental discipline, now resembles a decadent empire incapable of controlling its own streets. Meanwhile, British coppers bleed on foreign soil while our government wrings its hands over ‘protocol’.
One longs for the days when Palmerston would have sent a gunboat. Instead, we get diplomatic notes. The tragedy is not the violence itself.
It is the abject failure of European states to maintain the basic monopoly on violence that defines sovereignty. Paris 2024 is a preview of what awaits us all: a continent where hooligans dictate terms and governments apologise. Scotland Yard is right to demand accountability.
But they should demand it from a French state that has lost the stomach for order. The real question: will London learn from Paris’s mistakes, or will we too descend into managed chaos?
