where does François Bayrou’s warning cry come from?

It’s an essay that politicians have been quoting for decades, but few have read. Published in 1947, “Paris and the French Desert” by Jean-François Gravier, has, it must be said, never been republished since more than 1972. By the own admission of its author, who died in 2005 amid general indifference, it is an “austere” and “overloaded with statistics” essay.

But for the son of a Béarnais farmer who has been staying at the Matignon hotel for a month, it still conceals many truths. “ “There is Paris, the big metropolises and the French desert. Part of the national fabric is disappearing in the media and politically,” launched François Bayrou in his general policy speech on January 14.

“There are indeed those who talk on TV and those who watch TV. A young…