At the end of August, a senior minister resigned from the government of France. Hardly, surprising, you might say.
Ministers resign from governments all the time, often just before they re about to be dumped.
But this resignation was unusual, in fact doubly unusual. First, because the minister in question resigned on a question of principle. And second, because this was his third resignation from a French government on a point of principle. Jean-Pierre Chev nement is the minister now the former minister in question. But Chev nement is also a maverick, a socialist who admired and consciously aped the style and the policies of Charles de Gaulle, the first president of France s Fifth Republic.