Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
It is difficult to see how France will emerge from next month’s election peacefully. Flames are licking at the edges of the Republic and the man who lit the tinder was Emmanuel Macron when he called a snap election for 30 June and 7 July. Macron held a most unpresidential press conference on Wednesday in
The left in France may not be much good at winning elections but they are excellent when it comes to forming coalitions. Within 24 hours of Emmanuel Macron’s shock announcement on Sunday night of a snap election on 30 June, left-wing parties made a declaration of their own. A coalition of Communists, Socialists, Greens and
Emmanuel Macron visited Oradour-sur-Glane on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary since the village in central France was liquidated by SS troops. Laying a wreath at the site where 643 Frenchmen, women and children were massacred, the president of the Republic declared that: ‘We will remember Oradour, always, so that history never starts again’. That was
I sensed something significant was going to unfold on Sunday as I took my morning coffee at our village café. Enjoying the June sunshine I watched as a steady stream of men and women walked past on their way to the voting booth in the village hall. Forty-eight per cent of them cast their ballot
Emmanuel Macron tonight dissolved France’s National Assembly and announced there will be new parliamentary elections with the first round of voting on 30 June and the second round a week later. The president made an unscheduled appearance on television one hour after exit polls declared a crushing victory for the National Rally in the European
For Robert Fico it was a bullet, for Nigel Farage it was a milkshake. The targeting of both men demonstrates the alarming rise of intolerance spreading across Europe. Most of it is perpetrated by people whose political ideology can best be described as progressive, but they are extremists, prepared to make the leap from words to
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This week: The Farage factor. Our cover piece looks at the biggest news from this week of the general election campaign, Nigel Farage’s decision to stand again for Parliament. Farage appealed to voters in the seaside town of Clacton to send him to Westminster to be a ‘nuisance’. Indeed, how much of a nuisance will
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally – formerly the National Front – is expected to triumph for a third time running in the European elections this weekend. The party topped the poll last time, in 2019, and in 2014. But its principal candidate, five years ago and today, is not the 55-year-old Le Pen but the
If there is one place to avoid this week it is Normandy. The global elite are in town to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Along with as many as 25 world leaders there will be upwards of 12,000 of their security staff invading this normally sleepy part of Northern France. In addition, 43,000 gendarmes, police
The last time Nigel Farage stood for parliament was in 2015. He wasn’t elected, and it was his seventh failure to win a seat, as his many enemies love to point out. What has inspired Farage, the new leader of the Reform party, to have an eighth shot? The state of the domestic opposition, perhaps,
The Prime Minister of France has warned his people that any form of Frexit would leave them weeping into their pastis. ‘Don’t be like the British who cried after Brexit,’ said Gabriel Attal, in a radio interview on Thursday. ‘A large majority of British people regret Brexit and sometimes regret not turning out to vote,
War talk is all the rage in France. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza are often cited, but the war that has come to increasingly obsess the political class in recent weeks is the one that began in 1939. Almost every day brings another reference to a period that barely anyone in the Republic experienced first-hand.
New Caledonia must not become the ‘Wild West’ declared Emmanuel Macron last week during his flying visit to the Pacific Island. For two weeks the indigenous people, the Kanaks, have been in revolt against a voting reform they believe will marginalise them. The French President’s visit achieved little. Not long after Macron’s departure an insurgent
This evening French television broadcasts a live debate between prime minister Gabriel Attal and Jordan Bardella. The president of the National Rally is on course for a spectacular victory in the European elections on 9 June, but Emmanuel Macron hopes that his Boy Wonder might be able to close the gap tonight with a strong
It was 21° celsius in London on Sunday so it was curious to see Everton’s Idrissa Gueye wearing tights underneath his shorts as his team lost at Arsenal on the last day of the Premier League season. Tights appear to be a relatively new look for the 34-year-old Gueye, who started the early part of
In France, Holland, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Hungary and Austria parties described by their foes as ‘far-right’ are on course for significant gains at next month’s European elections. To the chagrin of progressive politicians, Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders are popular with many voters. But centrist groups in the European Parliament are determined
Five people have now been killed and scores wounded in the New Caledonia insurgency as Emmanuel Macron struggles to restore order on the Pacific island. There was a fourth night on disorder on Thursday, despite the state of emergency in place and the presence on troops on the streets. Military reinforcements from France are expected
The cold-blooded execution of two prison guards at a Normandy motorway toll on Tuesday has shocked France. It is for many commentators and politicians incontrovertible evidence of the ‘Mexicanisation’ of the Republic. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has told the escaped prisoner and his accomplices that they will be hunted down and punished, but it better
‘Sometimes when we turn on the television we get the impression that nothing’s going well in France,’ Emmanuel Macron said on Monday. ‘I don’t think it’s true.’ France’s president has developed a knack of being overtaken by events – and so it has proved once again. A huge manhunt is underway after two prison guards
Donald Trump made headlines this month when he claimed that London and Paris are no longer recognisable because ‘they have opened their doors to jihad’. It was a characteristically provocative statement from the former US president, and one that had his many enemies huffing and puffing with indignation. Trump was wrong to describe the two
