Gavin Mortimer

Pope Francis spent the weekend in Marseille where he admonished Europe for their attitude towards migrants. Specifically, the Pontiff took to task those who used words such as ‘invasion’ and ‘emergency’ when discussing the millions of migrants who have arrived in Europe in the last decade. 'Those who risk their lives at sea do not invade, they look for welcome,' he pronounced. Those who said otherwise were 'fuelling alarmist propaganda' and acting contrary to the teaching of the Catholic church.   The Pope reiterated the Vatican’s four-stage approach to migrants: welcome, protection, promotion and integration, the overriding aim of which is 'the safeguarding of human dignity'.

It is Keir Starmer’s misfortune that he arrives in Paris today for a meeting with Emmanuel Macron at the moment Europe faces one of its gravest challenges of recent years. More than 11,000 migrants have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the last week, an unprecedented influx that has exposed the deep divisions within the EU. Labour's leader reportedly wants to discuss how to better improve relations between Britain and the EU, but he may not have the full attention of the French president. Not only is Europe arguing amongst itself over how to tackle the migrant crisis, but Macron’s own party, Renaissance, is also at loggerheads over the content of the government's impending Immigration and Asylum Bill.

Emmanuel Macron was in Lille on Thursday evening to watch France defeat Uruguay as the Bleus made it two wins from two in the Rugby World Cup. The president was photographed swigging from a bottle of beer, just your normal rugby fan enjoying the game.  Rugby fans and their president have little in common. He is the strutting epitome of the aloof Parisian elite Macron was also present last week in Paris when France beat New Zealand in the tournament opener, which suggests that either he hasn’t a busy agenda this month or there is a political purpose to his rugby supporting.   The president has long been the self-appointed Superfan of the French football team, memorably punching the Moscow air with delight when they won the 2018 World Cup.

Emmanuel Macron is not happy. He would love to run for a third term as president but the French constitution precludes such a prospect. Last week, he described the rules as ‘bloody disastrous’, a declaration that earned the president a reprimand from Nicolas Sarkozy in a television interview on Wednesday. The former president has been busily promoting his memoirs in recent weeks, discoursing on all manner of subjects from Putin to mass immigration to the 2027 presidential election. It’s his belief that his former party, the centre-right Republicans, can be resurrected, but only if they ‘take risks’. That means a coalition, similar to the one that swept Giorgia Meloni to power in last year’s Italian elections.

Emmanuel Macron spent Monday morning in the presence of the French rugby team and for once he spoke without ambiguity. 'You are the best prepared team in the world,' he told them at their training camp south of Paris. 'You'll be brothers in arms, fighting from the first minute to the last. The team is bigger than you, just as the nation is bigger than any one of us. Make us proud, make us happy.'  France are indeed the bookmakers’ favourites for the Rugby World Cup, the tournament they are hosting for the first time since 2007. On that occasion, they were similarly confident going into the competition, only to be beaten in the semi-final by Jonny Wilkinson’s England.

The intellectual infirmity that has laid low much of Europe’s left this century had been painfully exposed this week in France. On Monday, the country’s new minister of education, Gabriel Attal, announced that when pupils return to the classroom next week none will be permitted to wear the abaya, a conservative form of Islamic dress that is worn to preserve one’s modesty. Justifying the interdiction, Attal said the abaya contravened France’s strict rules on the wearing of religious symbols to school. 'Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school,' Attal explained. 'You enter a classroom, you must not be able to identify the students' religion by looking at them.

It’s been a brutal month in France but one would barely know it from the reaction of much of the political and media class. Their attention has been focused on a rapper called Médine, who was invited at the start of August to appear at the Green party’s summer conference, which opened in the Channel port city of Le Havre on Thursday.  In the time between being invited and the conference, the 40-year-old rapper of Algerian descent became embroiled in a social media brouhaha after he described the Jewish writer Rachel Khan as a 'ResKHANpée,'; this is a crass play on words, 'rescapée' (survivor) being the word for someone who survived the Holocaust. Khan’s grandparents came through the holocaust.

The first time Mohamed Bazoum came to the attention of the European media was in the aftermath of the Great Migrant Crisis of 2015. The man who was, until a fortnight ago, the president of Niger, was at that time the minister of the interior.   The shockwaves of a war in Niger would be felt in Europe It was his responsibility to implement an accord between Niger and the European Union to stem the flow of migrants through his country north towards the Mediterranean coast. The majority of men, women and children who had Europe in their sights passed through the Nigerien city of Agadez, a route used by migrants traversing Africa for centuries. Most did so voluntarily but not all, and young Nigerian women fated for sex work in Europe also transited Niger.

In the last three years, Mali, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Niger have all undergone coup d'états. The most recent regime change was last week in the west African nation of Niger, where Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown by the elements of the presidential guard.   The coup’s leader is Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane. Last Wednesday he informed Niger’s 24 million citizens on state-run television that President Bazoum had been removed because of 'the continuous deterioration of the security situation, the bad social and economic management'.

France is preparing to evacuate its citizens from Niger following the coup d'état in the west African country on 26 July. The French embassy in Niamey – the capital of Niger – said in a statement that the air evacuation 'will take place very soon and over a very short period of time'. Last week’s coup, in which general Abdourahamane Tchiani of the elite presidential guard seized power from president Mohamed Bazoum, is the latest turmoil in a region that has become dangerously destabilised in the last three years. There have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso which, like Niger, were former French colonies but have turned against their erstwhile master.