Gavin Mortimer

Yesterday’s tragedy in the Channel has been ten years in the making. The British tabloids this morning are inevitably pointing the finger at the French for the deaths of 27 migrants who drowned after their dinghy sank not far from Calais, but that lets off the hook those who ultimately bear responsibility for the migrant crisis that afflicts Europe from Sweden to Sicily. One of those responsible is Angela Merkel, who is preparing to hand over the Chancellery to the insipid Olaf Scholz. Six and a half years ago she took the unilateral decision to open Europe’s borders to more than a million migrants and refugees. ‘We can do this!’ she declared. In an interview earlier this month Merkel claimed she had been vindicated. ‘Yes, we did it.

Right-wing Frenchman Eric Zemmour, who is expected to run for the presidency of his country next year, has been designated persona non grata in London by the city's mayor.  'Nobody who wants to divide our communities or incites hatred against people because of the colour of their skin or the god they worship is welcome in our city,' said Sadiq Khan in response to a question about Zemmour's presence in the capital. A noble declaration, one with which few would disagree, but rather incongruous coming from the mouth of Khan. For this is the man who waxed lyrical about Jeremy Corbyn at the Labour party conference in 2017.

Emmanuel Macron told his people last summer they would have to learn to live with Covid. A year-and-a-half on, France is unrecognisable to the country it once was: Covid passports are in force and face masks remain mandatory in many places. The president of France is not alone among Western leaders in his uncompromising approach to the pandemic: Holland, Austria and Germany are re-imposing restrictions and Boris Johnson, who used the 'learn to live with it' line in July, has refused to rule out a Christmas lockdown. Yet while Europe's presidents and prime ministers appear ready to go to any length to protect their people from this virus, their approach to another threat – the danger posed by Islamist terrorism – is far more insouciant.

A day after the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, was harassed as she left the London School of Economics, a murder trial in France reached its grisly conclusion. Yacine Mihoub was handed a life term after being convicted of stabbing 85-year-old Mireille Knoll multiple times and then setting her body alight in March 2018. The elderly woman, a Holocaust survivor, had known Mihoub since he was a boy, but he still snuffed out her life because she was a Jew. An accomplice claimed Mihoub screamed 'Allahu Akbar' as he stabbed Knoll. It was a murder almost identical in nature to that of Sarah Halimi, slain in the same arrondissement of Paris a year earlier. Her assailant also shouted 'Allahu Akbar' as he took the life of the retired Jewish doctor.

A French police officer was attacked with a knife in Cannes this morning. The victim – whose bullet-proof vest saved him from serious injury – was at the wheel of his stationary car when the assailant opened his door and plunged the weapon into his body. There are reports that the attacker uttered the words 'in the name of the Prophet'. The man was 'neutralised' by another policeman and is now in a serious condition in hospital. As the attack unfolded, left-wing MP, Mathilde Panot, appeared on a popular morning radio show and was asked about her party's controversial stance on giving weapons to police officers.

In the summer of 2020 the French Senate published a report on the ‘Development of Islamist Radicalisation and the means of combatting it.’ It was a wide-ranging review which included contributions from academics, writers, Muslim associations and politicians. Among those interviewed by the commission were the ex-security advisor Alexandre del Valle, Zineb El Rhazoui, a former columnist for Charlie Hebdo and Hugo Micheron, a doctor in political science, and the author of a 2020 book entitled The French Jihadism. The French Jihadism should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the nature of the threat posed by Islamic extremism – not just in France but across the West. Micheron interviewed 80 jihadists serving time for terror offences in French prisons.

In the early years of his presidency, Emmanuel Macron became known as Monsieur 'En Meme Temps'. The president of France was in the habit of setting out one vision but, 'at the same time', presenting an alternative point of view. He acquired the reputation of a man who was ideologically elusive. What does he stand for? Neither left, neither right, was his campaign slogan in 2017, and four years on he continues to flummox the French. Nowhere is this equivocation more apparent that in Macron's attitude to free speech. Twelve months ago, the French teacher Samuel Paty was brutally slain outside his school because he had shown a caricature of the prophet during a class discussion about freedom of expression.

As I read The Wet Flanders Plain by Henry Williamson, a veteran of the first world war who encountered hostility from locals when he returned to the western front in 1927, a thought struck me: have I stumbled upon the source of Emmanuel Macron's Anglophobia? Let's not beat around the bush; the president of France does not like us. Politicians and diplomats may gainsay, and claim that Macron has the greatest respect for the United Kingdom. But his behaviour during the last four and a half years indicates that the current resident of the Elysée is the most Anglophobic president since Charles de Gaulle. Throughout the Brexit negotiations Macron was the most intransigent of the EU leaders, and following Britain's departure he has been the most embittered.

It's a stroke of good fortune for France that Salah Abdeslam is a coward. Had he not been he would have died with the other nine members of the Islamist terror cell (one of whom was his brother) when they attacked Paris on the evening of 13 November 2015. Instead of detonating his suicide vest, Abdeslam dumped it in a dustbin and then called a friend in Belgium and asked to be collected. He spent the next four months hiding in a suburb of Brussels before police tracked him down. It's rare for a potential suicide bomber to be taken alive. In most cases all we have to judge them by is a theatrical video message filmed shortly before their death. The capture of Abdeslam therefore has been a boon. The trial is now in its third week and is expected to last until May.

Emmanuel Macron has once more infuriated many in France, but this time it has nothing to do with Covid passports or mandatory vaccination. In an address to the nation this week, the president discussed the disturbing scenes from Kabul as the Taliban invaded the capital of Afghanistan. France, he said, would be a haven for those Afghans 'who share our values' but nevertheless the country must 'anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows that would endanger the migrants and risk encouraging trafficking of all kinds.' His rhetoric went down badly with much of the French left.