The art of the steal

There’s something incredible about moments where life imitates art. Enter the crack jewel thieves who hit the Louvre recently, pulling off a crime à la Arséne Lupin. 

Tales of the gentleman thief – produced from the imagination of writer Maurice Leblanc – have been given a contemporary spin in the Netflix mystery series Lupin. In it, a fan of the old stories uses masterful disguises and canny planning to carry out audacious thievery in plain sight.

In one episode, the leading man steals an elaborate necklace from the Louvre. All part of an ingenious plan to right an injustice, of course – he is our hero after all. 

The popularity of the series – it topped the streamer’s charts in France and elsewhere – will likely give authorities in Paris additional reason to grimace after a gang knocked a brace of jewel-encrusted items there.

This is no Ratners gift set, we’re talking £76.5m worth of Napoleonic bling – a necklace, tiara and earrings of such fame and value that it’s thought they’ll be prised apart for sale, component by component, on the black market. 

The crime, executed with the help of getaway scooters, has grabbed the public consciousness. After all, audiences love a crime drama. And France has been hooked by more than one of late, with Nicolas Sarkozy, the country’s former president, beginning a five-year jail term for criminal conspiracy over steps by his aides to secure funds for his 2007 presidential run from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. 

If I had a euro for every time I’d heard someone say politicians are crooks and fraudsters, have enough to buy some of that Louvre loot

The 70-year-old will learn the outcome of an appeal this month. 

Protesting his innocence, he declared he would take two books into the clink with him. One is on the life of Jesus. The other? A classic of the French canon – The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, in which a wrongly convicted man escapes to seek his revenge.

No guessing what messages those choices were sending.

And three weeks in, he was released from jail under judicial supervision, pending that appeal.

Sarkozy has long presented himself as the subject of left-wing plotting and his protestations over this case have drawn support in a divided nation, with the likes of Marine Le Pen expressing hers. That feeling is mutual, to a point, with Sarkozy declaring that her National Rally is part of the nation’s “republican arc”. 

Le Pen herself is of course no stranger to the justice system, having been convicted earlier this year of misappropriation of funds. In the week before Sarkozy got the jail, a court rejected her appeal against her conviction – one she also claims is politically-motivated and which saw her barred from being able to seek public office for five years. Which was all box office too.

If I had a euro for every time I’d heard someone say politicians are crooks and fraudsters, I’d likely have enough to buy some of that Louvre loot.

Indeed, data bears out the fact that most people don’t trust government. At a UK-wide level, the latest British Social Attitudes survey found 45 per cent of adults trust government “almost never” – the lowest figure recorded in the 40 years that the question’s been asked. Separate polling found 67 per cent of people now believe “British politicians are out merely for themselves”. 

Actions like his have gone a long way to dent public confidence

In the Scottish Social Attitudes survey, 47 per cent of respondents said they trust the Scottish Government to work in the country’s best interests, with faith in the UK Government at just 21 per cent.

The levels have slumped since the pandemic, when our then prime minister was collared for breaching his own government’s lockdown laws in the scandal so memorably referred to as partygate. Boris Johnson’s £50 fine is a far cry from imprisonment but was hugely significant, making him the first sitting UK PM found to have broken the law while in office.

Yes, he gave an apology of sorts in the Commons. But actions like his have gone a long way to dent public confidence. 

Appearing before the UK Covid Inquiry last month, Johnson said those lockdown rules “probably did go too far” and there may have been means to exempt children from them. But anyone expecting a wholesale mea culpa will have had their hopes dashed. When asked about England’s A-level exams catastrophe, in which students received grades based on an algorithm that didn’t work, Johnson was characteristically bullish. “You try coming up with a system to give a fair exam result for people when they can’t sit exams,” he said. “It’s not easy, okay?”

There have been whispers from some parts of the Conservative Party that Johnson could return to save it from its dismal polling. Based on that appearance, those hopes must be very faint indeed.

While Johnson remains a big name in UK politics, Sarkozy retains a measure of influence beyond that of the former Tory leader, meeting in the period before his imprisonment with figures such as Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who has promised to deliver a “profound break” from the politics of the recent past.

The audacity is breathtaking – almost beyond belief

But a comeback for this diminished figure seems now as likely as Johnson entering No 10 again.

Sarkozy does, of course, retain support, and he put on quite a show as he left home for prison, walking hand-in-hand with his ex-model wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy as backers chanted his name.

The crowds had been invited by the ex-president’s sons, who clearly know a thing or two about making a dramatic statement. 

The Louvre robbers, too, chose to act in plain sight, breaking into the building in daylight and after the museum had opened. The audacity is breathtaking – almost beyond belief.

That seems to be a running theme lately.