Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
Trains are again running normally in France today after engineers worked over the weekend to repair the damage caused by Friday’s coordinated attack on the network. Also working overtime are fifty specialists from the national crime unit, who have pored over the three sites where saboteurs struck. ‘Even though the fires melted hundreds of cables,
France’s Olympics could not have got off to a worse start. Hundreds of thousands of train passengers have been left stranded after the country’s high-speed rail lines were targeted by a series of suspicious fires. Rail company SNCF says it’s a ‘massive attack aimed at paralysing the network’, with security services suggesting this morning that
There was a muted reaction among the French political class to the attempt on Donald’s Trump’s life. Keir Starmer sent his best wishes to the former president in the early hours of Sunday morning, but it was another six hours before president Emmanuel Macron followed suit. The caretaker prime minister of France, Gabriel Attal, made
The mayor of Paris went for a swim in the Seine on Wednesday and emerged invigorated. The water, said Anne Hidalgo, was ‘soft and wonderful’. Hidalgo had initially scheduled a date last month for her dip but the quality of the water didn’t pass muster so she was forced to postpone her PR stunt –
Marine Le Pen appeared on television on Wednesday morning in her first major interview since last Sunday’s election. The leader of the National Rally cast a critical eye over the chaos of the last week and described the cross-party squabbling as ‘parliamentary cretinism’. Even some within the New Popular Front, which won the most seats
It is bedlam in France. Nine days after the parliamentary elections that plunged the country into chaos, the political class continue to argue among themselves. The left-wing coalition, which won the most seats in the election, can’t agree on who should be prime minister. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, Renaissance, have announced that they won’t
England play Spain tonight in Berlin in the final of the European Championships. Emmanuel Macron is a football fan so he may tune in. Then again, it might all be a little too painful for him. If football was in keeping with history it would be France in the final. It’s their day, after all,
The day after the French left had pulled off a sensational victory in the parliamentary elections one of their newly-elected MPs sent a tweet. Faced with the seemingly unstoppable rise of the National Rally, Macron reverted to ‘moral arguments’ Aurélien Rousseau had triumphed in a constituency south of Paris, and he wanted to express his
France play Spain this evening in the semi-final of the European football championship, and there may be a smile on the faces of some of the French players. Several have been social media in the last 24 hours, expressing their satisfaction with the success of the left-wing coalition in the election. ‘Congratulations to all the
Over a photo of a pensive Emmanuel Macron, the headline on the front of one French tabloid this morning asks: ‘And now, we do what?’ Good question. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will tender his resignation to the president this morning, although it is by no means certain it will be accepted. Macron could ask him
In a sensational result that not even Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself could have imagined, his New Popular Front looks set to come first in the French elections. Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble party is forecast to be second forcing Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which led the first round, into third place. Mass tactical voting to stop
Marine Le Pen was called a ‘bitch’ this week and threatened with sexual violence. It’s what passes for rap music these days in France. The threats won’t unduly concern Le Pen. She’s experienced worse. When she was eight, far-left extremists tried to kill her and her family with five kilos of dynamite. The Le Pens
The left-wing French newspaper Le Monde last month sent its London correspondent across Great Britain to gauge the mood before the general election. He reported that Britain was ‘a broken nation’, and its people ‘glum and divided’. Britain is not in the best of shape, a point on which the people and its politicians are
The mood has taken a dark and intolerant turn in France since the National Rally’s (NR) victory in the first round of voting in the parliamentary elections last weekend. The left and Macron’s centrists have not accepted their reverse with good grace. On Sunday evening there were spontaneous protests in several cities, including Bordeaux, where police
The German government has expressed its ‘concern’ at the prospect of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally forming the next government of France. Poland’s PM Donald Tusk – the man who said Brexiteers deserved ‘a special place in hell’ – responded to the result by saying ‘this is all really starting to smell very dangerous’. Not in Italy,
It has been a bad few days for Volodymyr Zelensky. The president of Ukraine must have covered his face with his hands as he watched Joe Biden’s rambling performance against Donald Trump in last week’s televised debate. Trump’s view on Ukraine’s war with Russia are well-known: he wants an end to the conflict Then came
Emmanuel Macron suffered the biggest humiliation of his presidency on Sunday evening as his Renaissance party was beaten into third place in the first round of the parliamentary elections. Exit polls confirmed what the opinion polls predicted last week: that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is now the dominant force in French politics. It surpassed
France votes today. If the opinion polls are correct Marine Le Pen’s National Rally will be the big winner in the first round of the parliamentary elections. A poll on Friday had the NR on 36.5 per cent – seven and a half per cent ahead of the left-wing Popular Front coalition, with Emmanuel Macron’s
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Katy Balls reflects on the UK general election campaign and wonders how bad things could get for the Tories (1:02); Gavin Mortimer argues that France’s own election is between the ‘somewheres’ and the ‘anywheres’ (7:00); Sean Thomas searches for authentic travel in Colombia (13:16); after reviewing the books Great Britain?
The European Union has reached an agreement on the bloc’s political leadership for the next five years – and in the process again demonstrated that ineptitude is no barrier to promotion. The 27 leaders of the EU have reappointed Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission. Estonian Kaja Kallas is the High Representative for Foreign
