© Nick EdwardsParis streets, 2016
Will the last person to leave Paris please turn the lights out? Things have not got quite that bad in the most romantic capital in Europe - yet - but it is starting to look as if it is heading that way. Faced with a once-beautiful idyll that is now increasingly smelly, litter-strewn, crime-ridden and badly run, Parisians are fleeing for the hills - or failing that, the Côte d'Azur or Normandy's green hills.
The latest to do so has raised many eyebrows. It is hard to think of a more consensual figure in modern France than Stéphane Bern. The star royal reporter at Paris Match magazine is a longtime television perennial, famous for his lavish Secrets D'Histoire documentaries. He has presented the Eurovision Song Contest and debutantes' balls and has been appointed by President Macron (a great fan) as the head of an unpaid unofficial mission to catalogue historical French monuments in urgent need of repair.
In our Republic, the 58-year-old's cross-party and cross-class appeal is as close as we come to royalty. Think of him as a sort of Prince Charles or David Attenborough figure. This should give you some idea of how seismic his decision to leave Paris has been. And he is not going quietly.
"The city has become a rubbish bin," he told the popular Le Parisien tabloid this week. "Emblematic street furniture, from benches to newskiosks to wrought iron railings are being replaced by ugly modern pieces.
"I've never seen so many trees sawn down, so many flowerbeds torn off. How can you pretend the city is building new 'ecological neighbourhoods' when this starts with tearing down all the trees? The city is noisy, dirty, violent; the streets and pavements are full of potholes; historic monuments are sold off to commercial concerns."
Bern is moving to the country, he says, to an 18th century former royal school he has been painstakingly restoring, giving up a book-lined flat in the heart of Pigalle on the Right Bank of Paris. "Despite the heartache, I am happy to go. I was going mad in Paris."
He is far from alone. The lively #saccageparis campaign has been running online for months now, with ordinary Parisians raging against the daily indignities of life in the city, from rats roaming the streets to graffiti and endless black bags of uncollected rubbish.
© Getty/Nicolas Messyasz/Pool/AFPAnne Hildago, Mayor of Paris
While Bern might not wish to point the finger, plenty in Paris are unafraid to say they have had more than enough of the city's failed Left-wing regime. Besides being mayor of Paris, Hidalgo is the Socialist Party's official candidate for President, despite denying just last year that she had any national ambitions. For her troubles she is being rewarded with four or five per cent in the polls, an embarrassment for the party of Mitterand and Hollande.
Hidalgo, a character noted for her political vindictiveness, has denounced her critics as "a bunch of far-Right astroturfers". The reality is quite different. Even the most mild-mannered Parisian is waking up to the ruination that the Left has visited on a city that deserves so much better.
Not a place you want to go to unless you really have no other choice… but many people do have many other cities to go to than Paris. A real shame and very sad …. Especially for the people who still call Paris their city. I wish them strength and honour to take their city back from the red coats…. Godspeed !