Macron’s two glasses of wine a day is not what the doctors order

EMMANUEL MACRON’S staunch defence of drinking wine twice a day has come under fire from French doctors, who warned that “seen from the liver” it was as bad for one’s health as any other alcoholic beverage.

The French president confessed to drinking a glass at lunch and at dinner. He also promised not to tighten the socalled Evin law, which restricts advertising on alcoholic beverages. “It is a blight on public health when young people get drunk at an accelerated speed with alcohol or beer, but this is not the case with wine,” said Mr Macron, adding that critics shouldn’t “bug the French” over an age-old pleasure.

However, in Le Figaro, nine leading doctors criticised “a government which appears more sensitive to the interests of alcohol than the general good”. They wrote: “What counts in terms of toxicity is the amount of alcohol drunk. Seen from the liver, wine is indeed alcohol”.

As headlines go, Does French President Like Wine? is up there with Is the Pope a Catholic? as a question inviting an affirmative answer. But Emmanuel Macron’s taste for his nation’s most famous export has landed him in l’eau chaud with French medics. They think he is setting a bad example by drinking wine at lunch and dinner. It is unlikely that the French people will pay a blind bit of notice to the tut-tutting of the doctors. A daily tipple need not be debilitating for the politician. Winston Churchill managed to conduct a war and run a country sustained by alcohol – including an estimated 42,000 bottles of champagne throughout his long life – well into old age. Imagine a modern leader admitting to such excess and surviving in office. President Macron clearly has some catching up to do.