Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
France is on the brink of another revolution! The proles are swarming to the barricades and it’s only a matter of time before President Macron is dragged from the Élysée palace. That is the gist of some of the more excitable reporting about what happened yesterday in France. It was certainly a dramatic day after
They say Spring is a magical time to visit Paris but perhaps not this year. It’s not so much love that is in the air of the French capital but the stench from 7,000 tons of uncollected rubbish. The city’s refuse collectors have been on strike as part of the nationwide protests against the government’s
America must get tough against the Mexican drug cartels, former US Attorney General, William Barr, declared earlier this month. Likening them to Isis, he backed a joint resolution from two Republican senators, giving the US president authority to deploy the military against the cartels in Mexico. Failure to do so would, he warned, allow the cartels to
There was more than a whiff of ‘bromance’ between Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron when they met at the Anglo-French summit in the city of love. The weather in Paris was grey and cold, but there was no denying the warmth of the greeting that Macron extended to Sunak as the PM arrived at the Elysee
The editorial in today’s Le Figaro heralds the dawn of a 21st century Entente Cordiale and the newspaper carries an interview with Rishi Sunak. Speaking ahead of today’s Anglo-French summit in Paris, Sunak says he wants to ‘open a new chapter with France’. Le Figaro pins the blame for the deterioration in relations between the
Finding an effective solution to Europe’s migrant crisis has eluded the continent’s leaders for a decade. Presidents, prime ministers and chancellors have tried, and failed, to tackle the issue. Above all, governments have been scared to stand up to the powerful pro-migrant lobby which has controlled the narrative since the crisis began in 2011. Is
The incompetence of MI5 in failing to prevent Salman Abedi detonating his bomb at the Manchester Arena in 2017 beggars belief. According to Sir John Saunders, who chaired the inquiry into the Islamist atrocity which killed 22 people, a better response from MI5 ‘might have prevented the attack’. In publishing his 226-page report, Sir John
There is much excitement among western Europe’s chattering classes after Elly Schlein was elected the new leader of Italy’s left-wing Democratic party. It is the first time that a woman has led the Italian left. The Guardian quoted the 37-year-old as saying her party will now be ‘a problem’ for Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s conservative PM.
‘Watch the Sahel,’ warned Tony Blair in an article marking the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Because of Russian influence, the region ‘will be the source of the next wave of extremism and migration to Europe,’ the former PM forecast in the Daily Telegraph. As the increased numbers crossing the Mediterranean from Africa
Fifty years ago, one of the most controversial books of the late 20th century was published. Camp of the Saints was written by Jean Raspail, a French travel writer, who explained decades later that the idea for the novel had come to him one day in 1972, as he looked out at the Mediterranean from
Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni are no strangers to having a spat. The first was last autumn, about migrants; this time they have fallen out over Ukraine. The Italian prime minister made no secret of her irritation with the French president last week on discovering he had invited Volodymyr Zelensky to Paris. It was, declared
UEFA has published its independent review into the chaotic Champions League final last May and it is brutally honest in admitting its own failings. The events in and around the Stade de France as Liverpool played Real Madrid in European football’s showpiece event made global headlines for all the wrong reasons. Television pictures of French
A notable feature of how the French public view the war in Ukraine is that the strongest support for its continuation is among voters who identify as Centrists and Socialists. Those most in favour of a peace settlement are backers of the left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the right-wing Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour. A
The reaction in some quarters to William Shawcross’s review of Prevent, the UK’s counter-extremism programme, has been predictable. The Muslim Council of Britain, Amnesty International, the Guardian and Cage have all criticised the report and the author, with Amnesty launching a particularly unpleasant ad hominem attack on Shawcross, describing him as ‘bigoted’. None of the
The bombshell official review into the Government’s anti-radicalisation Prevent programme will land on desks in Whitehall today – but will, as politicians like to say, any lessons be learnt? Its author, William Shawcross, is reported to have been bold in highlighting the deficiencies of the scheme, which, he says, has ‘failed to tackle the ideological
Piers Morgan brought out the bulldog in Rishi Sunak during their interview on Thursday evening. ‘If you come here illegally – if you’re an illegal migrant here – then you will not be able to stay here,’ thundered the Prime Minister, in as much as he ever can thunder. People who arrive in Britain illegally,
Another 1.2 million people took to the streets in France yesterday to protest against Emmanuel Macron’s plan to push back the age of retirement from 62 to 64. His prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, insisted at the weekend that his pension reforms are non-negotiable. We’ll see about that, was the response of the people, who for
Life in Europe is becoming increasingly precarious; a case of hoping it’s not your turn to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a Salisbury court on Monday a 21-year-old Afghan with a long history of violence was convicted of the brutal murder of Thomas Roberts; on Wednesday, a Palestinian allegedly stabbed
In 2018, a 16-year-old boy called Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai shot dead two men in Serbia with a burst of eighteen bullets from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. Four years later he murdered again – inflicting a fatal stab wound on 21-year-old Thomas Roberts. Roberts, whose ambition was to join the Royal Marines, was killed because he had tried
There was another protest in Paris on Saturday. According to the organisers, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise, 150,000 turned out on a crisp winter’s afternoon to opposeEmmanuel Macron’s pension reform. The French President wants to lower the retirement age from 64 to 62. But independent analysis put the numer at the protest at 14,045. It
