How Marseille became France’s Narcoville

France’s Interior Minister is the tough-talking Bruno Retailleau. In his inaugural declaration a fortnight ago, he hammered out his three priorities: ‘The first is to re-establish order, the second is to re-establish order, and the third is to re-establish order.’ Standing behind Retailleau was Gerald Darmanin, the man he was replacing as France’s ‘top cop’. He was also tough-talking but, like the interior ministers before him, the rhetoric had little effect on the violent lawlessness that has reached into every nook and cranny of the Republic.

Within a few days, Retailleau admitted that he had been shocked by just how feral France has become; each morning, he told a newspaper, he is briefed by the police on the ‘abominable events’ of the previous evening, crimes of which ‘the media only know a tiny part’. Sometimes the crimes are so heinous they make the front pages, and often the crimes are committed in Marseille, the Mediterranean city which, according to its magistrates, is descending into a ‘Narcoville’.