After the first forty minutes or so of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, as we plodded through the world alphabetically, the barges carrying the teams had finally got to Djibouti – or was it Eritrea?  Could we really keep going with this for four hours? The only matters of very mild interest had been why was Australia skipped over and how many Third World countries have scarily commie flags.

But, soon after, it became clear that the world had shifted on its axis. Until Paris, the Olympics opening ceremony was family entertainment – the host country showing off to people of all ages its best side and what made it distinctive and special (best done with a strong dose of humour, the gold standard being Sydney in 2000). The French could have reminded us of the many reasons their country is the world’s top tourist destination, with possible references to Deux Chevaux cars, croissants, cheese and champagne, plus maybe a nod to the internationally much-loved voice of 1960s France, Françoise Hardy, who died recently. What the organisers gave us instead was drag queens, ‘non-binaries’, bearded women, polyamory, heavy metal, mockery of Christianity plus images of violence in making light of the beheading of Queen Marie Antoinette. The magnificence of Paris in the background contrasted sharply with the tacky undergraduate antics the French establishment decided would represent their country to the world. ‘This is France!’ Macron tweeted. Many would beg to differ.

The young children of a London journalist who I know, who’d been greatly looking forward to the event, were totally confused and went to bed in tears. What a bizarre way to welcome the world to a celebration of sport.

The parody of Da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ with a table of drag queens, including one featuring a serious wardrobe malfunction next to a child, betrayed further appalling judgment, as well of course as being a gratuitous insult to Christians. The organisers presumably didn’t notice or care that the opening took place on the eighth anniversary of one of France’s most shocking terrorist horrors, when Muslim extremists stormed a Catholic church and killed the priest, Father Jacques Hamel, while he was celebrating Mass. As has been remarked by many, the organisers’ cowardice in mocking Christianity was contemptible. They would never risk having an equivalent go at Islam.

We haven’t yet received an explanation as to why the Paris Olympics opening ceremony would parody a work by an Italian painter, now housed in Milan. The organisers fell into disarray in response to the predictable backlash. Artistic director Thomas Jolly denied inspiration from Da Vinci. This was contradicted by a Paris Olympics official and Barbara Butch, who played Christ with a halo in Jolly’s ‘tableau’: she posted a (later deleted) photo of the scene on Instagram, above Da Vinci’s work, captioning it ‘The New Gay Testament!’ Clearly an anti-Christian agenda was afoot: the official Olympic poster included an illustration of the Dôme des Invalides, the former Royal Chapel, with its Christian cross in sinister Stalinist fashion erased. Such anti-Christian acts were probably in breach of the Olympic Charter, which bans religious and political propaganda at Olympic events. The organisers eventually issued a non-apology apology: ‘if people have taken any offence, we are really sorry’. Presumably to minimise further criticism, they took down from the internet their video of the opening.

In fact devoting much of the opening ceremony to a Gay Pride extravaganza was an appropriate curtain-raiser to the heavily woke games. The International Olympic Committee has again demonstrated that it’s still a captive of extreme gender ideology, recognising athletes who fail female gender tests elsewhere as women. The Paris organisers at the same time have gone predictably full woke with their insistence on ‘sustainable’ vegan food for the athletes – and, often, spectators – and resistance to air conditioning in the 30-degree-plus temperatures.

The Olympic flag being raised upside down at the opening ceremony, accompanied by the surely divine retribution of the only downpours in Europe at the time, said it all. Swimmers vomiting after being obliged to swim in the Seine and Celine Dion, who gave us the anthem of an expensive sinking ship, were also spot-on comments on the Games. Who was responsible for the shambles? Thomas Jolly gave the game away by telling the New York Times that Macron personally signed off on his plans. The French President has considerable form with poor judgment. After Notre Dame was severely damaged by fire in 2019, he stubbornly resisted its restoration to its original state, urging that the destroyed original spire and undamaged stained-glass windows be replaced by ‘contemporary architectural gestures’. To their great credit, France’s heritage authorities rejected his wacky ideas.

His judgment is similarly unreliable in his political day-job. His decision to call early legislative elections after Marine Le Pen’s National Rally humiliated him by winning June’s European Parliament elections has blown up in his face. He apparently thought voters would baulk at giving another win to Le Pen, and that, if they didn’t, and her party formed government, it would disappoint its supporters and torpedo her chances of winning the presidency in 2027. Macron flopped on both calculations. Le Pen’s party again won the highest proportion of votes, with 37 per cent, up from 31 per cent in the Euro-elections.

But under the quirks of France’s electoral system, it still fell well short of being able to form a majority. Macron’s Ensemble party meanwhile was again humiliated, losing about a third of its seats – many to the hard left. So Macron has managed to strengthen Le Pen while making any new government he manages to stitch together reliant on the hard left. The policies which have driven French voters to the right – mass immigration and attendant crime and terrorism, net zero fanaticism, general wokery – will continue and play to Le Pen’s agenda as she works towards her fourth campaign for the presidency in 2027.

Macron’s principally urban, tertiary-educated and white-collar support base will largely have approved of his woke antics at the Olympics. But in most of France outside the Paris Périphérique, they were heavily denounced and caused embarrassment – an own goal for which Le Pen will warmly thank him.