Europe

Emmanuel Macron is facing arguably the gravest crisis of his presidency after another night of rioting across France. Much of the trouble was in the Paris region, particularly Nanterre, to the west of capital, where on Tuesday police shot dead a 17-year-old after he sped away from a vehicle checkpoint.   On a night of extreme violence, police cars were torched, police stations mortared, shops pillaged, trams destroyed and an attempt was made to storm a prison at Fresnes. Dozens of rioters were arrested in Paris, but there was also disorder across France, from Lille in the north to Lyon in the east to Toulouse in the south.   Successive governments have

‘The left is sweeping to power across Europe,’ suggested the headline in the Independent in September 2021. The newspaper called on the analysis of Denis MacShane, the former Labour MP, to explains to its readers why this was so. MacShane posited that the election of Joe Biden as US president had reinvigorated the left-wing electorate while the population at large were voting for parties who were dealing with climate change most vigorously.   Eighteen months later and red has become an endangered colour in European politics. The latest blow to the left was in Sunday’s Greek general election; not only was the centre-right Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis re-elected with over

Numerous heads of state from the third world are in Paris for a summit hosted by President Macron. The aim of the conference – or the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact to give it its full lofty name – is to ‘address the needs of developing countries in the fight against poverty.’ Is France, or indeed the rest of the West, in a position to dish out advice to developing nations?   The days of Europe being able to lecture developing countries about efficiency, integrity and prosperity are long gone. It was bleakly ironic that on the eve of the summit Paris was rocked by a huge gas

Civilisation’s last line of defence runs through the Élysée Palace. Emmanuel Macron has been lambasted by his opponents for necking a beer with Toulouse rugby players to celebrate their victory over La Rochelle in the Top 14 final. The video of le Président chugging down the offending brew has got mustard up the noses of French legislators across the political spectrum.  The Times reports that Socialist senator Laurence Rossignol condemned Macron for ‘a macho cliché’ while Gilbert Collard, an MEP for the far-right Reconquête, dismissed Macron’s actions as ‘showing off’. Green deputy Sandrine Rousseau accused the president of engaging in ‘toxic masculinity’. Far be it from me to tell my granny how to

Emmanuel Macron never does anything by chance, so why did he allow himself to be filmed downing a beer in one on Saturday night? The clip, which has gone viral, has angered puritanical progressives. Green MP Sandrine Rousseau has branded Macron’s behaviour ‘toxic masculinity’.  The president of the French Republic slaked his thirst just before midnight in the dressing room of the Toulouse rugby team in the Stade de France. Toulouse had beaten La Rochelle to win the French rugby championship, an event at which Macron had been introduced to the players before kick-off. He ducked out of a similar invitation in April at the final of the French football

There is a growing sense of unease in France that a new wave of Islamist terrorism will soon break over Europe. In February, Adel Bakawan, a Franco-Iranian specialist in Islamic extremism, said that the Islamic State is regrouping and is planning a mass casualty attack in ‘Berlin, London or Paris’. This week Thibault de Montbrial, president of the Centre for Reflection on Homeland Security, spoke in similar terms during a radio interview.   While Isis, or the Islamic State, no longer has a caliphate as it did between 2014 and 2019, it still has many fanatical followers scattered in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Referencing a report written by the Dutch intelligence

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Germany’s far-right populist party, is enjoying a surge in support. A poll by broadcaster ARD this month revealed that 18 per cent of voters backed the AfD – its highest rating since the party was founded in 2013. This level of support – which puts the AfD on level pegging with the SPD – is ringing alarm bells in Berlin. Since the end of the second world war, Germany’s post-war identity has been moulded around coming to terms with its history. Germans even have a word for it: ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’. The national mantra for eight decades has been ‘never again’. But is something sinister afoot in German

As the First Ashes Test begins at Edgbaston it is fitting to recall England’s oldest cricket adversary: France. The Marylebone Cricket Club’s (MCC) first ever international tour was scheduled for France in the summer of 1789. Owing to local difficulties the tour did not go ahead. The match was eventually rescheduled for the bicentennial of the French Revolution with France beating the MCC by seven wickets. In the space of a fortnight, we have witnessed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meeting with president Biden in Washington to announce ambitiously that Britain would lead on setting up international norms on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This was followed a few days later by president

Silvio Berlusconi, whose state funeral will take place today in Milan, was the first modern populist. The media tycoon became a politician to take back control of Italy from the establishment on behalf of the people. The Italians called him Il Cavaliere (The Knight). He created a brand of politics that decades later would become a new driving force in America and Europe and would be called populism. Berlusconi reminds me of Jay Gatsby, the tragic hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great novel Italians voted for him in their droves. Like Donald Trump, he was dead rich but loved by the dirt poor. He spoke their language: he loved beautiful football and beautiful women. He hated tax and red tape and fines and the big bad

As Russia frantically attempts to hold on to its territorial gains in the face of the much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, there are early signs that it is also failing to retain its diplomatic and foreign policy advances. The anti-Western energy alliances it had constructed around the world with many of the leading oil and gas producers, which had endured despite the invasion, are beginning to fracture. Its attempts to shutdown competitors to Russian oil and gas have proved futile. It all went wrong so quickly for Russia. Back in 2016, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) expanded to include Russia as part of OPEC+. The deal, painstakingly brokered by Saudi

There’s an irony in the timing of Silvio Berlusconi’s death at the age of 86, coming on the same weekend that saw the (at least temporary) exit from politics of Boris Johnson. For in many respects, the Cavaliere (‘Knight’) as he was universally known in Italy, was an even more flamboyant role model for our former prime minister. Berlusconi, who led four Italian governments, blurred the lines between showbusiness and politics until they became all but invisible – in much the same way Boris Johnson has in Britain. True, Boris may not yet be as wealthy as the billionaire Berlusconi, who was Italy’s third richest man. Boris’s short reign at the

‘Cead Mile Failte’, which means ‘a hundred thousand welcomes’, is a sentiment the Irish have long held dear.  We pride ourselves on our welcoming nature, our music, our famous pub culture and the fact that the average tourist will be almost overwhelmingly love-bombed by locals who are happy to see a new face and will want to regale them with tales of local lore.  But recently it seems that Ireland may have used up its welcomes and is, instead, retreating back into the dark terrain of nativism and suspicion of foreigners.  For a country that liked to boast about its welcoming nature, the last few weeks have seen the rise

What are the politics of your bicycle? An interesting question. I’d like to say that mine is an expression of a basically conservative temperament, with its ability to endow individual liberty, its lack of imposition on established cities and countryside, and its preservation of fine and noble sporting traditions.  On the other hand, the bicycle has a long progressive heritage. The suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst was a keen member of a socialist cycling club, known for its group renditions of ‘England, arise! The long, long night is over’. And as the gauche but committed cyclist Jeremy Corbyn demonstrated, ‘socialism can only arrive by bicycle’, in the famous words of Chilean politician

The Green mayor of Annecy, François Astorg, declared a fortnight ago that his town in the south-east of France was ‘a land of resistance against fascism, a land of solidarity, a refugee town for those fleeing war, misery and the unhappiness in the world’.   On Thursday, Astorg, expressed his ‘immense sadness’ and his ‘anger’ hours after a Syrian refugee ran amok in a park in Annecy, stabbing six people including four toddlers. ‘It’s the first time this has happened in Annecy,’ declared Astorg. ‘It’s unacceptable’.   The mayor has said that there will be a rally to bring the town together; the cynic is entitled to ask ‘what is the point?’ No

What kind of man walks into a park on a summer’s day and randomly stabs and slashes at toddlers? That is the question France is asking itself today after the latest in a long line of bloody atrocities. The scene of this morning’s attack was in Annecy in south-eastern France, a popular holiday resort. An eye-witness said that a man ‘started shouting and went straight to the pushchairs and stabbed the children repeatedly.’ At least three children were stabbed, along with a young woman believed to be a mother. The numbers of victims would have been higher had the police not arrived in just four minutes. As they entered the park, recalled another