Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
Why, asked a French mayor at the weekend, has he been ordered to fly his town’s flag at half-mast for the Queen until the day of her funeral? In expressing his indignation at Macron’s presidential decree, Patrick Proisy, the mayor of Faches-Thumesnil, a suburb of Lille, pointed out that Mikhail Gorbachev was accorded no such
France is at war again, or as good as, according to Emmanuel Manuel’s recent rhetoric. This time the enemy is Russia, which at least is a more tangible adversary than Covid, on which the French president declared ‘war’ in March 2020. Most of the Republic believed him and submitted to one of the most draconian
How do you solve a problem like Jean-Marie? That is dilemma facing Marine Le Pen as her National Rally party prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of its creation next month. The party has evolved a great deal in that time, especially in the decade since Le Pen succeeded her father, Jean-Marie, as leader of
Priti Patel wants the police to get back to basics and solve crime instead of parading their progressive credentials at every available opportunity. It’s about time: recorded crime in England and Wales is at a 20-year-old high. Villains have never had it so good. Just 5.6 per cent of offences reported to police resulted in anyone
The age of abundance is over, declared Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, which must have come as news to the 14 per cent of French people who live below the poverty line. The president has returned to the office after his summer break seemingly intent on bracing the Republic for a winter of discomfort, caused largely
Earlier this month I spent a week in Sicily, driving south from Palermo to Agrigento and then east to Syracuse and Messina. It was my first visit to Sicily in 17 years and, given the media reports, I had expected to find the island crowded with migrants from Africa. In fact, I saw none, other
In August 1999 a group of protestors demolished a McDonald’s restaurant under construction in Aveyron, southern France. Their leader was Jose Bové, a middle-class farmer, who whipped up his followers by declaring that ‘McDo is the symbol of the multinational who wants us to eat crap and make the farmers die’. The French regard that
If any further evidence was needed of the moral cowardice of the British political class it has been provided in the wake of the appalling attack on Salman Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution. There were of course messages condemning the atrocity in New York, although notably it took Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey
If the reports are right and it was Ukrainian special forces who destroyed as many as 20 Russian aircraft at Saki air base in Novofedorivka, Crimea, on Tuesday, president Volodymyr Zelensky might be minded once more to raise a glass to the British. Earlier this year it was widely reported that British special forces were
Five years ago, Paris was named the host city for the 2024 Olympics. How the country celebrated. No one more than its fresh-faced president Emmanuel Macron. ‘I salute this success and the tremendous opportunity that the Games represent to assist in the transformation of our country,’ he declared. Macron was speaking in a wider context,
What must Africans think when they observe the shameless hypocrisy of Western leaders? In Cameroon this morning incredulity must be the prevailing emotion. Three days ago, dignitaries there were subjected to one of Emmanuel Macron’s insufferable bouts of moralising. Do not do business with Vladimir Putin, warned the French president, speaking shortly after Russia’s foreign
France and Britain have been bickering again, this time about the chaos at the ferry ports over the weekend. The ‘clown’, as Emmanuel Macron reportedly dubbed Boris Johnson, may be on his way out, but there seems no end in sight to the circus that Anglo-French relations have become. Might that change with a new
It’s been five weeks since Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won 89 seats in the French parliamentary elections and thus far no one has goosestepped into the National Assembly. This has come a shock to the left who have spent a decade warning that a vote for Marine Le Pen’s party was a vote for
Two of Emmanuel Macron’s ministers were rebuked last week for words they had spoken in the past, but only one is fighting for their job: Caroline Cayeux, who is responsible for ‘territorial cohesion’. Last Tuesday, she was asked by the public senate if she regretted saying in 2013 that gay marriage ‘goes against nature’. Cayeux, a Catholic,
During a ceremony at Windsor Castle on Tuesday, Her Majesty the Queen bestowed the George Cross on the National Health Service. The Prince of Wales was in attendance, as were a select group of ‘health leaders and workers’ from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The honour was announced last year, when the country was
Here are some statistics that ought to send a shudder through Tory MPs. Between 1995 and 2012 the French centre-right was in presidential power, first under Jacques Chirac and then the administration of Nicolas Sarkozy. The month after Sarko was elected president in 2007, his party, Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), won 313 seats
The 109th edition of the Tour de France is underway although Friday’s first stage, held for the first time in Denmark, was spoiled by heavy rain and numerous crashes. Not that the adverse conditions dampened the spirits of the estimated half a million spectators who gathered in Copenhagen to witness a spot of sporting history.
Covid cases are on the increase in France, as they are in most European countries, and the scientists who have been silent for months have once more found their voice. At the weekend professor Jean-François Delfraissy called for everyone in France this autumn to have a fourth vaccination, while Alain Fischer, president of the Scientific
You can’t blame Boris Johnson for jetting off to Kyiv last week for another meet-and-greet session with Volodymyr Zelensky. He got a warmer reception from the Ukrainian President than he would have in Doncaster, the town he snubbed in order to grandstand on the international stage. Johnson was scheduled to have made an appearance at
‘Stillborn’ is how Le Figaro describes Emmanuel Macron’s presidency after his Renaissance party failed to win an absolute majority in the National Assembly. On a wretched day for Macron, his coalition party won 245 seats in the lower house, dozens short of the number needed to secure the majority that would have allowed him to
