Andrew WM Smith

EN DIRECT, crise politique : Emmanuel Macron a reçu les présidents des deux Chambres, Yaël Braun-Pivet et Gérard Larcher Le chef de l’Etat doit consulter les présidents des deux Chambres s’il veut dissoudre l’Assemblée nationale. Sébastien Lecornu poursuit pour sa part ses ultimes négociations et a reçu cet après-midi B...

Potentially significant news from France that Macron has met the Presidents of both chambers (Assembly & Senate), which seems to give even more fuel to the fire of a potential dissolution should Lecornu's attempt to find a path forward fail

www.lemonde.fr/politique/li...

I wonder if we could speed run this whole thing by feeding the last few decades of confected French debates about communautarisme into Google translate, printing them out, and posting them to the party HQs

PM - France's prime minister resigns - BBC Sounds After just 26 days, Sébastien Lecornu is gone. What's next for France?

If you wanted to have a listen, it is 48mins into this programme:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Thank you, very kind!

Just been speaking on the PM programme on BBC Radio 4 about the French political turmoil: a crisis of the Fifth Republic beset by the instability of the Fourth against the backdrop of political extremes as in the Third

Lecornu's special mission until Wednesday seems like a desperate response to the fractures within the socle commun, trying to deny political gravity. Surely, every party smells a dissolution on the cards by now, putting the brakes on consensus building

a man in a suit and tie is holding a microphone and saying `` i 'm not leavin ' '' . ALT: a man in a suit and tie is holding a microphone and saying `` i 'm not leavin ' '' .

Lecornu with a late announcement (after a pep talk with the President)

Here's the clip of my subsequent appearance, offering a somewhat live reaction to news of the French PM's resignation

www.threads.com/@france24_en...

It’s happened again

I was joking with @drdiongeorgiou.bsky.social a few weeks ago that Macron is the Russell Martin of the Fifth Republic in his second term. Keeps playing it out from the back with his pals at PM while leaving things wide open so folk can play straight through

Will be going back onto France24 to discuss shortly

Fairly amusing to go on the news and say the new government may well fall by 4pm only to be undercut by the PM resigning before 10am!

And he's resigned! Wow!

Rupture or censure, Lecornu promised. Well... nobody else seems to see the rupture...

This is not, they say, the break with the past they were promised. With 12 out of 18 ministers continuing, that seems fair. Plus, on the left, although use of the controversial 49,3 has been ruled out, there has been nothing tangible in the form of concessions

Been on France24 this morning talking about the Lecornu cabinet and the intriguing possibility of it falling before it even sits, as the centre-right react to the appointment of former Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire

Eclipse in the dark years: pick-up flights, routes of resistance and the Free French This article charts the importance of clandestine flights from Britain into Occupied France during the Second World War as a route of resistance. These pick-up flights were coordinated from London ...

For anyone interested in the #FrenchHistory connection, you can read my 2018 article on the clandestine flights to support resistance (and Jean Moulin crash landing at the airfield): doi.org/10.1080/1350...

A dafty in PPE

Black and White image of the control tower in operation, with an aircraft overhead

The current state of the derelict air tower

The air tower pictured further off

Been out this morning on a site visit and meeting others involved with the campaign to save the old Air Control Tower at former RAF Tangmere

www.savetangmeretower.com

🗃 #skystorians

'The employment rate for 21 to 30-year-olds with degrees is higher than for young people overall, non-graduates in the same age bracket and the general public. They are also less likely to be unemployed or economically inactive.' 2/2

Yes, today’s jobs market is tough for graduates – but AI ... Figures show that while competition is tight, it’s the economy not tech that is the cause

There’s...little evidence that graduates are significantly worse off now than in the past....the employment rate among 21 to 30-year-old graduates was 86.5% in 2024, much closer to before the financial crisis (86.9% in 2007), than during and after it (83.6% in 2009).' 1/2

Cheers Dion!

This looks like a great volume (due out Feb next year)! I'm really pleased that I was able to contribute a chapter. Mine is: "The Bastille and the Roundabout: Popular protest and the revolutionary past of the Gilets Jaunes"

🗃️ #FrenchHistory #SkyStorians

I was joking with someone recently and coined an excellent history tagline. It is a perfect empty signifier into which can be poured almost any nonsense:

It takes a lot of yesterdays to make a tomorrow

The Leo Baeck Institute London offers internships of varying length to students specialising in German-Jewish studies or a related field.

www.lbilondon.ac.uk/vacancies

Half of UK adults now pay on mobile - data shows Regular mobile payments surged across different age groups last year, new banking data suggests.

It is completely irrational, though for some reason I do not trust this payment method and will not use it. The only time I've been tempted is when I saw a friend pay with his watch almost with the flick of a hand as they continued a conversation fluently

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

“Know how to make this work for you.”

This is the last set of posts from the French History Network ECR in 2025*

We asked what advice ECRs would give to other ECRs or PG students.

🗃️

frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/6695/

That's an excellent phrase to capture the analysis: die <mauer> Andy Capp im kopf

Proofs returned! One more step along the road. The book itself is due out in February next year 🗃️ #FrenchHistory #SkyStorians

Teaching Public History in Britain Today: A Roundtable Discussion Abstract. ‘What is Public History Now?’ This was the question posed by the 2022 AHRC Network led by Julia Laite. The network culminated in a conference of

How do we teach public history today? Pleasure to join @julialaite.bsky.social, @ktrcarpenter.bsky.social & Anna Maguire in this roundtable for @historyworkshop.org.uk. Image from @qmul.bsky.social qHeritage project with @museumofthehome.bsky.social
academic.oup.com/hwj/advance-...

No, the UK has not reached ‘peak graduate’ The salary and non-salary data show degrees still deliver for students in the long run

Increases in minimum wage have eroded the graduate premium, but it's still significant, especially when non-pay benefits are included. It's a marathon, not a sprint.