Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
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
It sums ups the sorry state of the Socialist party in France that they can’t even elect a new leader. After yesterday’s vote by members, the two contenders are this morning both claiming victory. To be frank, whether it is the pretender Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, or the incumbent Olivier Faure, who emerges victorious is immaterial; the
The French are falling back in love with nuclear energy, and so is their president. In 2019, only 34 per cent of people polled expressed a positive view of France’s nuclear programme, a figure that had increased to 51 per cent two years later. The most recent survey revealed it to be 60 per cent.
Last week the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, was confronted at a constituency meeting by a Holocaust survivor called Joan Salter. The 83-year-old courteously took Braverman to task for what she described as her inflammatory comments concerning the 45,000 people who arrived illegally in Britain last year, people Ms Salter called ‘refugees’. She said that words
The mother of my daughter was at the Gare du Nord on Wednesday morning when a man ran amok with a knife. Six people were stabbed but she was not one of them. I have a friend who wasn’t so fortunate. In July 2016, three members of his family were enjoying the Bastille Day celebrations in
When the Sunday newspaper, Le Journal Du Dimanche, recently published its annual list of France’s fifty most popular personalities, politicians barely got a look in. Only two made the cut: Emmanuel Macron, at number 35, and Marine Le Pen, at 48. When the list was first published in 1988 the president of France was François
Suella Braverman sparked a backlash last November when she described the number of small boats crossing the Channel as an ‘invasion’. The chattering classes objected to the ‘inflammatory language’ of the Home Secretary rather than the fact that 45,756 people entered Britain illegally in 2022. The provocative word this month is ‘infinite’, used by a
