A report published this week by the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee made public its highly critical conclusions after a one-year inquiry into Britain's involvement in the 2011 military intervention in Libya which led to the overthrow of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The committee described the operation, which was led by France, as ill-prepared, ill-informed and without a cohesive strategy. No parliamentary inquiry into the military campaign has ever been held in France, and what exactly fuelled then-president Nicolas Sarkozy’s eagerness to remove Gaddafi remains uncertain, although a number of clues point to a motive ignored by the UK committee of MPs. Fabrice Arfi reports.
The surprise vote in Britain highlighted numerous fractures within British society, in particular between old and young voters. As Mediapart English's Michael Streeter reports, the referendum also persuaded many disgruntled and impoverished working class voters to vote for the first time in years – and punish the Establishment elites.
Whichever way Britain votes in its referendum on EU membership this Thursday, French president François Hollande has promised new “initiatives” in the coming days to reinvigorate the European Union. Hollande himself has gone out on a limb by associating himself strongly with British premier David Cameron's opposition to so-called 'Brexit'. Meanwhile, as Lénaïg Bredoux reports, the French Left is itself split over the issue of Europe and how to approach it.
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