Marcus Ashworth

France is too big to fail, so I think that there will be a question of, OK, if there's a staring match between Frankfurt and Berlin and Paris, who's going to move first?

But I think trust is frankly a useful reminder not to take things too far.

And I am concerned that if the politics gets more radical and...

Le Pen becomes a little less mainstream and her number two decides to go a bit more radical as well on issues like pensions and taxation.

You could get a much worse economic situation over the next few years and you could end up with something approaching a trust moment, even if it's not exactly the same.

So I don't think you could put it entirely to bed.

Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah.

Sick, tired, disgusted, fed up, whatever you want, whatever adjective you want.

The thing is that there's always a...

there's two potential outcomes, right?

Either France becomes a country, almost like the Netherlands or other countries where the politics is crazy, but somehow people carry on, businesses carry on, the economy carries on.

We've seen a bit of that.

Or my concern is that we get much, much worse to come.

There seems to be a nihilistic, almost nihilistic view in society, huge distrust of politicians, loss of faith in policy, disgust almost with the political class.

And that I think is very dangerous for the future.

And just in the short term, what do you think is going to happen this week?

I think Macron is going to keep doing these kind of Hail Mary moves.

But as I said, I do think parliamentary elections are the most likely outcome, if not the end of this year and the start of next year.