France’s riots are fuelling division over Europe’s migrant crisis

The riots that have ravaged France in recent days have given Eric Zemmour a second wind. The leader of the right wing Reconquest party has been on the airwaves and in the newspapers, saying, with a touch of schadenfreude, ‘I told you so’. 

In a television interview on Saturday evening, Zemmour explained that the reason he entered politics in late 2021 was because of what he described as the Republic’s twenty-year policy of ‘crazy mass immigration’. It was the issue on which he campaigned during last year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. Unlike Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party, Zemmour barely mentioned the cost of living crisis; immigration and Islam were his main agenda.

His twin obsessions didn’t pay off. He received 2.4 million votes in the first round of the presidential campaign – a long way off his expectations.