Gavin Mortimer

‘The left is sweeping to power across Europe,’ suggested the headline in the Independent in September 2021. The newspaper called on the analysis of Denis MacShane, the former Labour MP, to explains to its readers why this was so. MacShane posited that the election of Joe Biden as US president had reinvigorated the left-wing electorate while the population at large were voting for parties who were dealing with climate change most vigorously.   Eighteen months later and red has become an endangered colour in European politics. The latest blow to the left was in Sunday’s Greek general election; not only was the centre-right Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis re-elected with over 40 per cent of the vote, but the newly-formed Spartans took 12 seats in parliament.

Numerous heads of state from the third world are in Paris for a summit hosted by President Macron. The aim of the conference – or the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact to give it its full lofty name – is to ‘address the needs of developing countries in the fight against poverty.’ Is France, or indeed the rest of the West, in a position to dish out advice to developing nations?   The days of Europe being able to lecture developing countries about efficiency, integrity and prosperity are long gone. It was bleakly ironic that on the eve of the summit Paris was rocked by a huge gas explosion that blew apart a building in the fifth arrondissement, injuring dozens of residents. It’s the second such incident in recent years.

Emmanuel Macron never does anything by chance, so why did he allow himself to be filmed downing a beer in one on Saturday night? The clip, which has gone viral, has angered puritanical progressives. Green MP Sandrine Rousseau has branded Macron’s behaviour ‘toxic masculinity’.  The president of the French Republic slaked his thirst just before midnight in the dressing room of the Toulouse rugby team in the Stade de France. Toulouse had beaten La Rochelle to win the French rugby championship, an event at which Macron had been introduced to the players before kick-off. He ducked out of a similar invitation in April at the final of the French football cup, worried that the heckling would shake the stadium’s rafters.

There is a growing sense of unease in France that a new wave of Islamist terrorism will soon break over Europe. In February, Adel Bakawan, a Franco-Iranian specialist in Islamic extremism, said that the Islamic State is regrouping and is planning a mass casualty attack in ‘Berlin, London or Paris’. This week Thibault de Montbrial, president of the Centre for Reflection on Homeland Security, spoke in similar terms during a radio interview.   While Isis, or the Islamic State, no longer has a caliphate as it did between 2014 and 2019, it still has many fanatical followers scattered in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

The Green mayor of Annecy, François Astorg, declared a fortnight ago that his town in the south-east of France was ‘a land of resistance against fascism, a land of solidarity, a refugee town for those fleeing war, misery and the unhappiness in the world’.   On Thursday, Astorg, expressed his ‘immense sadness’ and his ‘anger’ hours after a Syrian refugee ran amok in a park in Annecy, stabbing six people including four toddlers. ‘It’s the first time this has happened in Annecy,’ declared Astorg. ‘It’s unacceptable’.   The mayor has said that there will be a rally to bring the town together; the cynic is entitled to ask 'what is the point?

What kind of man walks into a park on a summer’s day and randomly stabs and slashes at toddlers? That is the question France is asking itself today after the latest in a long line of bloody atrocities. The scene of this morning’s attack was in Annecy in south-eastern France, a popular holiday resort. An eye-witness said that a man 'started shouting and went straight to the pushchairs and stabbed the children repeatedly.' At least three children were stabbed, along with a young woman believed to be a mother. The numbers of victims would have been higher had the police not arrived in just four minutes. As they entered the park, recalled another witness, the assailant 'ran straight up to an old man who was with his wife and stabbed him'.

Perhaps the most illuminating comment made by Nigel Farage during his discussion with Fraser Nelson on Spectator TV earlier this month was when he reflected on the Brexit campaign. 'I remember being told, by [Daniel] Hannan and Boris Johnson, "no, no, don’t discuss immigration in the referendum",' reminisced the former leader of UKIP. '"We’ll lose the referendum. Some of our very posh friends don’t like this sort of thing".'  It's not just posh Tories who blanch at the mention of the ‘I’ word; so do posh socialists, which explains why immigration is now out of control in the UK. The vast majority of MPs, if not all strictly ‘posh’, certainly hail from the middle-class graduate class.

The head of the French Olympic Committee has resigned just over a year out from the Games’ opening in Paris. Brigitte Henriques announced her decision at the Games’ committee's general assembly, the result according to the French media of ‘a year-and-a-half of internal squabbling.’ There was much fanfare when Henriques was nominated to the role in June 2021, winning 58 per cent of the vote to triumph over her nearest rival, the former Judo Olympic champion Thierry Rey. The then 50-year-old Henriques was lauded as the first female president of the French Olympic committee, the culmination of a career that had included a stint as the vice-president of the French Football Federation. ‘I want to dedicate this victory to all women, particularly my daughters,’ she said.

Paris has a problem. The city currently houses some 5,000 migrants in hotels, much to the chagrin of the capital’s hoteliers. France's capital is hosting two major tournaments in the next year: the Rugby World Cup in September and the Olympics next summer. An enduring headache for president Macron is where supporters will stay; hotels have been clamouring for permission to free up their rooms for tourists.  The solution Macron has come up with is to move the migrants out to the sticks, thereby freeing up those hotels. Their facilities were commandeered by the government because the numbers of homeless in Paris (the majority of whom are migrants) have overwhelmed the accommodation centres.

The story that dominated much of the French media last week was the vicious assault of a shopkeeper in Amiens. A gang kicked and punched Jean-Baptiste Trogneux outside his chocolate shop in a savage attack that left him bruised and nursing a couple of broken ribs. It was, alas, an all too common incident in a country where violent crime has been rising steadily for a number of years.  What made this assault newsworthy was the fact that Trogneux is the great-niece of Brigitte Macron; she and her presidential husband condemned the attack, as did figures from across the political spectrum, many of whom tried to exploit the poor man’s injuries for their own ends on television or social media.

Hell hath no fury like an environmentalist scorned and Emmanuel Macron has felt a wave of green wrath since his declaration last week that France has gone far enough in pursuit of net zero. ‘We are ahead, in regulatory terms, of the Americans, the Chinese and of any other power in the world,’ said Macron in a speech at the Élysée. ‘We must not make any new changes to the rules, because we will lose all the players,’ he continued.   Calling for a ‘pause’ of more EU environmental red tape, Macron said member states required stability if they were to attract future investment.

Across Europe the numbers are soaring. In Britain, net migration figures are expected to near one million when the figures are released later this month; in Germany, there have been 101,981 asylum applications so far this year, an increase of 78 per cent on the same period in 2022.   2022 was a record year in France with the arrival of nearly half a million legal migrants. This is on top of those who are in the country illegally. According to the MP for Nice, Eric Ciotti, president of the centre-right Republican party, there could be as many as one million in this category.  Extremism is not only present on both sides, it is rising The crisis in France has become so grave that respected politicians are warning of looming disaster.

Tuesday was ‘Europe Day’, or as the European Union proclaimed on its website, the occasion to ‘celebrate peace and unity’ and give thanks to Robert Schuman. It was the French statesman's declaration on 9 May 1950 that put in place the framework ‘for a new form of political cooperation in Europe’.  No leader in Europe marked the day quite as enthusiastically as Emmanuel Macron. His Renaissance party tabled a bill on Tuesday in the National Assembly demanding that every village and town hall throughout France be made to fly the EU flag alongside the French tricolour.  One wonders what they made of Macron’s ‘Together, united’ declaration in Rome The President of France will certainly support the bill such is his zeal for the EU.

France and Germany have fallen out again after the French interior minister Gérald Darmanin accused Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni of incompetence in her handling of the migrant crisis. In response, Itay’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has cancelled a meeting in Paris scheduled for today and he is demanding an apology from Darmanin for his 'vulgar insults'. Meloni has put on hold her own visit to Paris, which was due to take place next month, according to the Italian press. It’s not the first time the interior minister has outraged a neighbour. Twelve months ago, Darmanin was accused of wrongly laying the blame for the chaos that erupted in Paris during the Champions League final on Liverpool fans.

My first instinct was to check the date: was it actually April 1st on Monday? On realising there was no mistake the second reaction was one of wonderment that anyone still takes the United Nations seriously.  The once respected organisation held its Universal Periodic Review in Geneva on Monday, and France didn’t fare well.   As a succession of shamelessly panjandrums slapped down France, its police were once more coming under sustained attack by hordes of anarchists and far-left extremists Beacons of liberty lined up to trash the Republic for what they described as the heavy-handedness of its police in recent weeks. Russia, Iran, Venezuela and China expressed their grave anxiety about state repression.