Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
The golden girl of the National Front has gone and with her go the grassroot hopes for an alternative to Marine Le Pen. The decision of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen to withdraw from political life wasn’t entirely unexpected, rumours first emerged earlier in the year, but it is nonetheless a heavy blow for the party rank
So what now for Marine Le Pen and the National Front? On an evening when the party polled a record number of votes in a French election, twice as many as when they reached the second round in 2002, there was little sense of triumph away from the cameras. ‘There’s obviously a bit of disappointment,
Emmanuel Macron is the eighth and the youngest president of the Fifth Republic, winning an estimated 65pc of the vote in the second round of voting. It caps an astonishing rise for the 39-year-old former investment banker who only founded his En Marche! party in April last year. The news was greeted with delirium by
There were times during last night’s televised debate between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron when it resembled more a playground slanging match than a pitch to become president of France. The National Front leader and her En Marche! counterpart traded insults, exchanged stares and did their best to shout each other down during two-and-a-half hours
Bad weather swept across southern France over the May Day holiday but summer is just around the corner and with it will come the burkini. Last week, a call was issued to burkini-wearers to gather at the Cannes film festival later this month, with the organiser saying it will be the perfect moment ‘to celebrate
France is in a flap and Emmanuel Macron is to blame. On Sunday evening the En Marche! leader looked for all the world like a man who believed he’d already been crowned king. Bounding onto stage with a wink, a wave and a smile to his adoring supporters, after his first round victory, he then
After their humiliation with Brexit and Donald Trump, the pollsters returned to form in France with their predictions of a Macron and Le Pen first round victory. If the polls are as accurate with their forecast for the second round, then the new president of France will be the centrist Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old is
Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face each other in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday May 7th after the two finished neck-and-neck in the first round of voting. With votes still to be counted, there are slight discrepancies in the final percentage, but according to a Harris Interactive exit poll
With less than twenty four hours before polling booths open in France, the country’s security forces are on full alert for another attack by Islamist extremists. More than 50,000 police and 7,000 soldiers have been mobilised as part of the massive security operation but they still lack the resources to safeguard every polling station. In
Last night, an Islamic terrorist opened fire with an assault rifle on a police van on the Champs Élysées in Paris, killing one policeman and wounding two others before he was shot dead. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack and according to the French newspaper, Le Parisien, the gunman was a 39-year-old called Karim
The news on Tuesday that French security services have prevented another attack by Islamic extremists should come as no surprise given the proximity of the election. Nor should the fact that according to police sources the intended target was François Fillon. When police raided the apartments in Marseille of the two suspects, they reportedly discovered
It was the 34th annual convention of France’s Muslims at the weekend in le Bourget, just north of Paris, and the main topic of conversation was the upcoming presidential election. Five years ago, when François Hollande beat Nicolas Sarkozy to become president, the Socialist candidate benefited from 86 per cent of the Muslim vote. That won’t
Marine Le Pen sees plots everywhere. In her view the media, the Socialists, the judiciary and even the European Union have been conniving in recent months to enfeeble her presidential campaign. As she said during last week’s televised debate, ‘I’m politically persecuted’. But the plot with the potential to cause the greatest damage to the National
The presidential campaign is nothing if not a test of endurance for the French public although there were moments yesterday evening when the televised debate felt more like a punishment. For four hours, the eleven candidates talked, or to be more precise, shouted, interrupted and ranted at one another. It was, in the words of Le Figaro,
In 2002, I befriended an old Frenchman called Andre. He had been a resistant, one of the first, and when the SAS parachuted into the wooded, rolling countryside of the Morvan in central France, he was there to greet them. For three months in the summer of 1944, the SAS and the Resistance waged a guerrilla
It’s just as well François Hollande won’t have the opportunity to meet Donald Trump in person before he leaves the Élysée Palace in early May. It will save the outgoing president of France any potential embarrassment. When Angela Merkel visited Washington earlier this month she stood in stony silence as the American president claimed in front
It was the burkini that brought Monday night’s debate to life between the five main presidential candidates for next month’s French election. For the first hour of the televised debate there had been much posturing and postulating but no sharp exchanges. That changed when Marine Le Pen accused Emmanuel Macron of turning a blind eye
I had an illuminating argument with a Socialist friend at the weekend. It began when I expressed my surprise that greater Paris has just passed a law compelling construction workers to speak only French. The ‘Moliere clause’ in the ‘Small Business Act’ requires all firms engaged in publicly-funded building projects to talk French. The intention
Marine Le Pen must be struggling to contain her glee at the implosion of the centre-right Républicains party. An extraordinary 24 hours began on Sunday when François Fillon assembled his supporters in the torrential Parisian rain to reaffirm his intention to stand as their candidate in next month’s election. The former Prime Minister then appeared on TV yesterday evening to
‘One cannot govern France,’ declared François Fillon last November, ‘if one is not irreproachable.’ A little over three months later, however, and the centre-right candidate for next month’s French presidential candidate has had a change of heart. The 62-year-old has today announced that he will be placed under formal investigation over allegations that during a period of several
