Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
On the same day that the Dutch went to the polls my teenage daughter went to Strasbourg on a school trip. Once in the EU parliament she and her classmates were given a guided tour by a French MEP; she was charming, by all account, a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
Dutch politics got a blast from the past on Monday when a right-wing politician was assaulted. The country goes to the polls tomorrow and the hospitalisation of Thierry Baudet, attacked with a bottle in a bar in the northern city of Groningen, is a reminder of what happened to Pim Fortuyn in 2002. After being assaulted in
Among the crimes of Suella Braverman, the now former Home Secretary, was a speech she gave in Washington at the end of September. Multiculturalism had failed, she told her audience, ‘We are living with the consequence of that failure today’. ‘Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination
In the week that David Cameron returned to government and Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan came a cropper, Nigel Farage has been on the other side of the world preparing for a Bushtucker trial. Farage’s decision to sign up for I’m a Celebrity has been spectacularly badly timed on his part. One of the most sensational
It has been a bruising few days for Emmanuel Macron. It began last Friday when he gave an interview to the BBC at the Élysée palace at the conclusion of a peace forum in Paris. In unusually forthright rhetoric, the president said there was ‘no justification’ for Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which was killing ‘these
Over 100,000 French citizens marched peacefully through their cities on Sunday. They did so to show their support for the country’s 500,000 Jews, a growing number of whom have been harassed physically and verbally since Hamas attacked Israel last month. In the Mediterranean city of Nice many of the 3,000 demonstrators chanted ‘we’re all Jews’,
In his speech to parliament on Tuesday, King Charles declared that Britain was ‘committed’ to tackling anti-Semitism. His remarks were made amid a surge in acts of such bigotry on British streets, the majority occurring in London. On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Police announced that they had arrested 98 people on suspicion of anti-Semitic hate
France’s most infamous antisemite is back in the headlines. At the weekend, the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, declared in an interview that he didn’t believe Jean-Marie Le Pen was an antisemite. This came as a surprise to many given that the 95-year-old Le Pen, who founded the National Front in 1972, has
One of the most shocking images in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 was the sight of Palestinians dancing in the street. Who would have known the murder of 3,000 Americans would elicit such delight? A larger number of Palestinians were on the streets of the West Bank in January 2015 following the
Emmanuel Macron has suggested the formation of an international coalition to combat Hamas similar to the one deployed against the Islamic State several years ago. The president of France floated the idea on Tuesday during his visit to Israel. An Elysee source later fleshed out the proposal in more detail. ‘We are available to build a
When an Islamist extremist charged into his school in Arras, northern France, with a knife, Christian Berroyer could have hidden away. Instead, the caretaker decided to confront the killer. ‘I grabbed a chair without thinking and I went outside,’ said Berroyer. Asked why he did what he did, Berroyer said he was ‘just doing his
Last year, a French broadcaster asked if Belgium was in danger of becoming a narco state. The question was posed in light of the news of the cocaine flooding into the country and the growing influence of Belgium’s drug cartels. Others believe that Belgium most closely resembles an Islamic state. The former Belgian senator
For a man so keen to thrust himself onto the international stage, Emmanuel Macron has been surprisingly quiet over the last fortnight. At the beginning of 2022, the President of France shuttled across Europe in an attempt to avert conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Though his diplomatic efforts were criticised in some Anglophone quarters, Macron earned
On Monday evening a service of remembrance was held in Arras cathedral in northern France. The congregation was there to pay its respects to Dominique Bernard, the teacher who was murdered by an Islamist at his school last Friday, not far from the cathedral. The service was led by Bishop Olivier Leborgne. ‘We don’t have
Rarely has the publication of a book been so providential. The Teachers Are Scared was released in France last Wednesday, written by Jean-Pierre Obin, a former teacher who rose to become the General Inspector of France’s National Education. Two days later, Dominique Bernard was stabbed to death in his school in Arras. The man
Emmanuel Macron’s appeal for France to unite has not been heeded. Barely 12 hours after the president made his address on primetime television, a 20-year-old of Chechen origin stabbed a teacher to death and wounded two others in a high school in the northern city of Arras. The assailant, now in custody, is reported
Emmanuel Macron addressed France on television on Thursday evening. It was an opportunity for the president to reiterate his support for Israel in its war against Hamas, but also to call for his country to remain united. As Macron spoke to the nation, police in Paris were using tear gas and water cannons to
The political class in France have rounded on Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his failure to condemn Hamas’s attack against Israel. The far-left firebrand, a Gallic Jeremy Corbyn, reacted to Saturday’s massacre of Israeli civilians by Islamist terrorists with a tweet: ‘All the violence unleashed against Israel and Gaza proves only one thing: violence only produces and
The European Parliament hosted an event in Brussels last week entitled ‘Close Guantanamo’. It was hosted by two Irish left-wing MEPs, and among the invites were representatives of Cage, which has been described by the French government as an ‘Islamist’ organisation, an allegation Cage denies. Cage was briefly infamous in Britain in 2015 when its
Pakistan has told all unauthorised Afghan migrants that they must leave the country by the end of October. Imagine if France announced in the wake of a terrorist attack that it was expelling all Algerians. There would be uproar across the world The announcement was made on Tuesday, and affects as many 1.7 million men,
