Gavin Mortimer

Life has never been so good for Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old president of Marine Le Pen's National Rally. A recent opinion poll had him as the runaway favorite to win the 2027 presidential election. One man who believes in his credentials is the former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. Now out of prison and promoting the book he wrote during his 20-day incarceration, the center-right Sarkozy said that Bardella reminds him of a young Jacques Chirac. Despite Sarkozy’s conviction for criminal conspiracy, he retains a large and loyal fanbase among the metropolitan boomer bourgeois, a demographic that the National Rally has traditionally struggled to attract.

David Lammy believes Britain should rejoin the EU customs union to boost economic growth. In an interview on Thursday, the Deputy Prime Minister argued that leaving the EU had ‘badly damaged’ Britain’s economy. A reversal of Brexit would be good for business he suggested. It was 'self-evident' that other countries had 'seen growth' after joining the customs union, Lammy told the News Agents podcast. The deputy PM avoided the question of whether Britain should rejoin the euro, as did Health Secretary Wes Streeting earlier in the week. Having declared that Britain was worse off out of the EU, Streeting was asked if the government was planning to take Britain back in. ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied.

Life is apparently so disagreeable in Donald Trump’s America that 40 percent of women aged between 15 and 44 want to leave. That is four times higher than the 10 percent who wanted to quit the US in 2014. According to Gallup, which conducted the poll, nearly half the nation’s younger women have “lost faith in America’s institutions.” This disenchantment accelerated after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which enshrined the constitutional right to abortion. Younger American men are bearing up better. Only 19 percent share women’s distaste for the Donald, a 21 percent differential which is the largest recorded by Gallup since it began asking the question in 2007.

Emmanuel Macron welcomed Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky to Paris this morning to discuss ‘the conditions for a just and lasting peace’. But is the French leader nervous about what peace in Ukraine might mean for Europe – and for France? There may be another reason why Macron is concerned at what peace in Ukraine might bring. It is an anxiety shared by others in Europe In an interview with a Sunday newspaper, France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, declared that ‘peace is within reach, if Vladimir Putin abandons his delusional hope of reconstituting the Soviet Empire by first subjugating Ukraine’. Macron showed little enthusiasm initially for the 28-point peace plan put forward by the USA and Russia, warning that Putin was not a man to be trusted.

National service is being brought back in France. Emmanuel Macron used a visit to a military base in the Alps on Thursday to outline his initiative. The service will begin next year for a term of ten months, and it will be voluntary. Macron's plan is being viewed as a response to the Russian threat, but for many French people there is a greater – and far closer – menace than president Putin. This view is shared among the silent majority and explains why Le Pen’s party now has the most seats in parliament Macron set a target of 50,000 annual recruits by 2035 with most aged 18 and 19, although it will be open for men and women up to 25 who have specific skills. France scrapped military conscription in 1996 but this new variation has the broad support of the public.

The government has deployed two aircraft to the Channel to detect and monitor small boats crossing under the cover of darkness. The planes, De Havilland Dash 8s, are equipped with hi-tech cameras and sensors and will give Border Force ‘eyes’ on the boats heading from France to England. The optimists within government hope that the aircraft’s ‘night vision capability’ will enable Border Force to identify and arrest the smugglers ferrying migrants across the Channel. After a period of inclement weather grounded the small boats, more stable conditions at the end of last week led to a surge in crossings: 621 migrants reached England on Thursday, 648 on Friday and 503 on Saturday.

There was a time when the French left turned its nose up at all things American. Too low-brow for them. Not now. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race has caused much joie de vivre in left-circles. For Mamdani, his youth is a virtue, but with Bardella it’s a weakness Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Gallic Bernie Saunders and the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, described Mamdani's win as ‘very good news’. The general secretary of the centre-left Socialist party, Olivier Faure, posted a smiley face on X above a headline in Le Monde, hailing Mamdani as ‘the youngest mayor in New York history’. Mamdani referenced his age during his victory speech in Brooklyn.

A man shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ drove his car into a crowd on France’s Ile d’Oléron this morning. At least ten people on the popular holiday destination – situated off the Atlantic Coast – were injured, and three are in a critical condition. Police arrested the driver, a 35-year-old man with a history of petty crime. A search of his vehicle revealed some gas cylinders. Among the injured is 22-year-old Emma Vallain, a parliamentary assistant to Pascal Markowsky, an MP in Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. A rising star in the party, she took part in a televised debate at the weekend about the current political deadlock in France.