They call him the Boa Constrictor. He sets his sight upon his prey — a TV station, a magazine, a publishing house, a West African port — squeezes the life out of it and then swallows it whole. He is Vincent Bolloré: a billionaire logistics magnate; a maritime monopolist; a corporate raider par excellence; a scion with his eye on the next inhabitant of the Elysée; Rupert Murdoch in a Breton stripe.
He is also, at least in part, the answer to the question people all over the world were asking as French voters flirted with the prospect of electing their first far-right government of modern times: what on earth has happened to France?
The extreme-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, long a looming threat in French politics, finished first in the European elections on June 9, a defeat that led President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the lower house and call for a fresh legislative vote.
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