Gavin Mortimer

Life in Europe is becoming increasingly precarious; a case of hoping it’s not your turn to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a Salisbury court on Monday a 21-year-old Afghan with a long history of violence was convicted of the brutal murder of Thomas Roberts; on Wednesday, a Palestinian allegedly stabbed two people to death on a German train. That same day in Spain a Moroccan under a deportation order was arrested after a verger was killed with a machete and a priest badly wounded in two related attacks in the city of Algeciras. Meanwhile in France an Algerian and a Kosovan are in custody after two incidents earlier in the month, one in Paris and the other in Strasbourg, where knives were used to inflict terrible injuries on bystanders.

It sums ups the sorry state of the Socialist party in France that they can’t even elect a new leader. After yesterday’s vote by members, the two contenders are this morning both claiming victory.  To be frank, whether it is the pretender Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, or the incumbent Olivier Faure, who emerges victorious is immaterial; the decline of the Socialists will continue, as I’ve been documenting on Coffee House for a number of years.   Put simply, Le Pen won the vote of men and women for whom identity still matters In 2006 the Socialists boasted a membership of 280,000, a figure that today stands at 41,000. Last week the party’s activists spurned the opportunity to initiate real change by eliminating Hélène Geoffroy in the first round of voting.

The French are falling back in love with nuclear energy, and so is their president. In 2019, only 34 per cent of people polled expressed a positive view of France’s nuclear programme, a figure that had increased to 51 per cent two years later. The most recent survey revealed it to be 60 per cent. If Emmanuel Macron had been polled he would have given nuclear energy the thumbs up, a reversal of his position when he was first elected president in 2017. He came to office promising to reduce the share of nuclear power in the energy mix to 50 per cent by 2025.

Last week the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, was confronted at a constituency meeting by a Holocaust survivor called Joan Salter. The 83-year-old courteously took Braverman to task for what she described as her inflammatory comments concerning the 45,000 people who arrived illegally in Britain last year, people Ms Salter called ‘refugees’. She said that words such as ‘invasion’, reminded her of the language ‘used to dehumanise and justify the murder of my family and millions of others.’ Salter, who was awarded an MBE for her work in educating people about the horrors of the Holocaust, arrived in Britain from Belgium, via the United States, in 1947.

Suella Braverman sparked a backlash last November when she described the number of small boats crossing the Channel as an ‘invasion’. The chattering classes objected to the ‘inflammatory language’ of the Home Secretary rather than the fact that 45,756 people entered Britain illegally in 2022.  The provocative word this month is ‘infinite’, used by a government source in admitting that even if Britain did stem the flow of Albanians crossing the Channel there are many thousands more migrants desperate to make it to Britain. ‘Their places on the boats would be filled by Somalis, Eritreans or Afghans who can’t afford to pay as much as the Albanians,’ they explained. The source is not wrong.

In August this year Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times. The novelist survived the attack, to the outward relief of the West. Prominent figures from the world of religion, politics and the arts offered their unqualified support to Rushdie as he lay in a New York hospital, recovering from the 12 knife wounds to his body.    The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, whose city in recent years has been targeted on several occasions by Islamist extremists, tweeted her support for Rushdie, a writer she described as ‘inspiring and a free man’.

‘Tis the season to be jolly, unless you live in Britain. An Ipsos poll last week suggested there is widespread pessimism in the UK about the year ahead. Six out of ten Brits expect food shortages in 2023, 57 per cent believe it unlikely their personal finances will improve, and two-thirds fear a general strike. British doom and gloom has been growing in recent years. According to data released last month by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the use of antidepressants in Britain has rocketed, with only Iceland and Portugal among 18 European nations having a higher consumption. In 2010, 54 people per 1,000 in Britain were taking antidepressants, a figure that doubled to 108 in 2020; in contrast, France’s consumption has remained stable at 53 per 1,000.

One can only feel for Kylian Mbappé. If scoring a hat-trick in a World Cup final but ending up on the losing side wasn’t enough, the Frenchman then had to endure a public display of affection from Emmanuel Macron.   Understandably, given that Mbappé and his teammates were still numb with the misery of losing the penalty shootout to Argentina, the PSG striker didn’t appear that receptive to being pawed by President Macron on the pitch at the Lusail stadium.

I’ve enjoyed the recent BBC blockbuster Rogue Heroes, a drama that is mercifully free from the moralising that Auntie often inflicts on viewers. All the same, as I told the Daily Telegraph this week, one should take the Boys’ Own interpretation of the formation of the SAS in world war two with a pinch of salt. Eight out of ten for entertainment but five for historical accuracy.   The main problem with Rogue Heroes is that it is true to David Stirling’s version of how the SAS was born. But as I make clear in my recent biography of Stirling, The Phoney Major, based on two decades of research, he was a master at twisting the truth to suit his own ends. Sound familiar? Harry and Meghan are not the first to put their truth before the truth.

Emmanuel Macron is confident France will beat England in Saturday’s World Cup quarter-final. In an interview with a radio station, the president of the Republic declared that he doesn’t ‘really have any doubts about the fact that we're going to win’. Macron is not known for his lack of self-belief but for once his bravado is justified: France are the reigning world champions, and in Kylian Mbappé they have the best player in the world.   The Parisian is a phenomenon, the scorer of five goals in four games so far at this tournament, and in netting twice in the last 16 win over Poland Mbappé surpassed the great Pele for the number of goals scored in World Cups by a 23-year-old. He scored four in 2018 as he inspired France to the title.