Gavin Mortimer

France kick off their World Cup campaign today against Senegal – and it seems almost inevitable that, win or lose, there will be ugly scenes on the streets of France during the tournament. Shops were looted, cars burned and police officers attacked by mobs In some cities, a curfew have been imposed. Clermont and Toulouse have ordered all unaccompanied under 16s to stay indoors between the hours of 10pm and 5am. The curfew applies only to certain matches, those judged to be ‘high-risk’; these include all France matches and some involving Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Jean-Luc Moudenc, the centre-right mayor of Toulouse, justified the curfew by pointing to the “incidents during the Champions League final”.

The Sudanese man who is in custody in Belfast settled in the city after travelling through Paris and Dublin. In 2023, he was given asylum by the British Home Office. That same year, Sudan descended into civil war, a conflict that continues to rage with appalling accounts of barbarity. On the one side are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and on the other the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Caught in the middle are civilians, particularly women and children, who are being abused by both sides. Earlier this year, the UN’s Human Rights Council accused combatants of displaying ‘utter disregard for human life’. Schools, hospitals and markets have been targeted indiscriminately, and ‘bodies of Sudanese women and girls have been weaponised to terrorise communities’.

France has maxed out on migrants. It’s a message that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party has been pushing for years, but it’s one now endorsed by the government’s Justice Minister. In an interview with a newspaper at the weekend, Gérald Darmanin declared that the Republic has ‘reached the limits of our capacities for integration and assimilation’. Darmanin believes that a three-year suspension of legal immigration is the answer, and in particular he wants a crackdown on the policy of family reunification. Introduced in 1976, the policy allowed migrants – mainly from North Africa – who came to France to work to also bring their family. ‘We must put an end to immigration as it exists today,’ said Darmanin.

France is ready to elect its first openly gay president. That is the belief of Gabriel Attal, who discusses his homosexuality in the memoir that was published yesterday. Attal became the first gay prime minister of the Republic when he was nominated by Emmanuel Macron in January 2024. At 34, he was also the youngest, a man described as a ‘mini Macron’. Attal is busily promoting his oeuvre – En Homme Libre (As a Free Man) – with media interviews and book-signing appearances. He told one radio station yesterday that being gay was ‘not at all’ a barrier to becoming president. ‘Our country is more open and tolerant than it realises,’ declared Attal.

Belgium is becoming the new point of departure for the gangs who traffic migrants across the Channel to England. It is reported that small boats are being launched from the Belgian coast, which then sail west to France, collecting migrants as if they were passengers waiting for a bus. The Belgian towns of Middelkerke, Nieuwpoort, De Haan and De Panne have all been identified as launch sites for migrant boats. According to Frontex, Europe’s border security agency, they began noticing a change in the smugglers’ tactics at the start of this year. Last year, there were no recorded cases of small boats setting out from the Belgian coast but in the first two months of this year, five vessels were detected.

According to a report in the French press today, the border between France and the United Kingdom is ‘at risk of being left unprotected’. The cynic might say that’s been the case for years, given the vast numbers of migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats since 2018. Over 41,000 made the journey in 2025 – the second highest number on record – and more than 4,400 migrants have landed in England in the first three months of this year. That figure is likely to increase significantly now that spring has arrived. The days are longer and, according to the BBC weather centre, the outlook for April is for ‘drier-than-normal weather’.

The left achieved a rare success in Paris on Sunday with the victory of Emmanuel Grégoire in the capital's mayoral election. The Socialist candidate saw off the challenge of the centre-right candidate Rachida Dati in the second round. Grégoire is the third consecutive Socialist mayor of the French capital, a run that stretches back to the election of Bertrand Delanoe in 2001. ‘Paris has decided to stay true to its history,’ exclaimed Grégoire in his victory speech. ‘Paris will be the heart of the resistance against this alliance of the right, which seeks to take away what we hold most precious and fragile: the simple joy of living together.

The first round of voting in France’s municipal elections has laid bare the country's deep fractures. In a turnout of 56 per cent yesterday, none of the parties emerged dominant ahead of this Sunday's second round, but the results underlined the mainstream support now enjoyed by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s la France Insoumise (LFI). Last month, France’s Interior Minister, Laurent Nunez, categorised the LFI as ‘extreme-left’, to go with the representation of the National Rally as ‘extreme-right’. If he had hoped to deter voters from casting a ballot for either party, Nunez’s tactic failed. Nothing, it seems, will stop the rise of either Le Pen or Melenchon.