Gavin Mortimer

One of my most delightful sporting experiences was watching the 2018 World Cup match between England and Tunisia in a Parisian bar. My English friend and I were heavily outnumbered by Tunisians but we were made to feel welcome in a festival of dancing and singing. Even when Harry Kane scored a late winner it didn’t dampen the spirits of the young Tunisians, many of whom were beer-drinking women.  I imagine they celebrated long into the night last week when Tunisia beat France in the World Cup, a shock victory that was greeted with good-natured joy by Tunisians across France.  Another North African nation has also been making its mark in Qatar, and Morocco’s defeat of Spain on Tuesday took them into the quarter-final of the World Cup for the first time.

The French have adopted a ‘when in Rome’ approach to the World Cup in Qatar, refraining from virtue-signalling their disapproval of their host's beliefs. As their captain, Hugo Lloris,  put it last week: ‘When we are in France, when we welcome foreigners, we often want them to follow our rules, to respect our culture, and I will do the same when I go to Qatar, quite simply. I can agree or disagree with their ideas, but I have to show respect.’ Of all western countries, France expects those who settle from different cultures to adhere to Republican values, particularly that of laïcité (secularism). This is in contrast to the multiculturalism of the Anglosphere where the prevalent philosophy is one of cheerful tolerance.

On the Sunday that Britain honoured its war dead, France remembered its fallen from the terrible evening of 13 November, 2015. One hundred and thirty Parisians were massacred at various venues across the capital. A subsequent investigation revealed that two of the Islamist terror cell had entered Europe from the Middle East by blending in among migrants. A year after the Paris atrocity, Monika Hohlmeier MEP, the European Parliament's chief negotiator on a new European terrorism law, outlined the EU’s determination to keep its citizens safe from future attacks. Hohlmeier placed particular emphasis on tightening the 'great deficiencies that became visible at the EU's external borders over the last months'.

France has adopted a different approach to the World Cup in Qatar than most of its European rivals. While the likes of England, Denmark and Germany will virtue signal their disapproval of the Gulf State’s views on various issues, France is set to remain silent.   Their captain, Hugo Lloris, the Tottenham goalkeeper, has said he won’t be joining other European skippers in donning an anti-discrimination armband during the tournament. ‘When we are in France, when we welcome foreigners, we often want them to follow our rules, to respect our culture, and I will do the same when I go to Qatar,’ explained Lloris. ‘I can agree or disagree with their ideas, but I have to show respect.

Rishi Sunak's remarks about curbing illegal Channel immigration are certainly bullish, but whether he translates words into action will make or break his political career. How many other busted PMs have over-promised on this issue?  Sunak told the travelling press corps on a flight to Indonesia, where the G20 summit is being held, that tackling the Channel small boats crisis is his 'absolute priority'. Other than the Autumn statement, Sunak added, nothing has occupied him more in recent weeks than what he described as ‘illegal migration’ between France and Britain.   Admitting that there are no short-term solutions, the PM nonetheless struck a positive note speaking to journalists.

Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron met on the fringes of Cop27 in Egypt on Monday and the Prime Minister emerged ‘confident and optimistic’ that a solution will soon be found to the Channel migrant crisis.  Sunak should be careful he doesn’t suffer the same fate as Boris Johnson, who made vigorous noises in 2019 about eradicating illegal immigration and then proved utterly incapable of fulfilling his pledges.   If the PM is serious about finding a solution to the migrant crisis he’ll require more than just the cooperation of the French President. He’ll need to hold talks with the EU, the Albanian government and Giorgia Meloni.   So far this year approximately 40,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats.

In May 2000 a French newspaper published an article which declared that ‘The Albanian mafia is corrupting Europe’. Le Parisien reported on an official Interpol document that described a ‘perfectly organised’ criminal network emanating from Albania, with its tentacles spreading west. Drugs, prostitution, gun-running and illegal immigration were the pillars of this syndicate, which had strong links with the Italian and Turkish mafias.  The Interpol report noted that 40 per cent of the heroin dealers arrested in Austria the previous year were Albanian, and Le Parisien reminded its readers that recently prostitution networks in the cities of Nice, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Metz and Nancy had been run by the Albanian mafia.

In the three years since its landslide victory in the 2019 election, the Conservative party has shed nearly seven million voters. The astonishing statistic was revealed in a report by the centre right think-tank Onward, released on the same day Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister; at least he’s in no doubt as to the scale of his challenge. To stave off disaster, Onward’s Will Tanner (a former adviser to Theresa May while she was PM) said the Tories must aim to hit a ‘sweet spot’: by appealing to the six in ten voters who are ‘left of centre on the economy, but…socially and culturally conservative’. This year Marine Le Pen’s National Rally found that sweet spot among the French electorate, winning 89 seats in the parliamentary elections.

One in four Italians who voted at last month's election backed Giorgia Meloni’s conservative Brothers of Italy party – that is 7,302,517 men and women. Second in the general election was the centre-left Democratic party with 5,356,180 votes with 19 per cent. In other words, Meloni’s victory was resounding. Coming as it did after the brief premiership of the unelected Mario Draghi one might even call it a victory for democracy. Yet the western reaction to Italy electing its first female prime minister was overwhelmingly cold and aloof.

A penny for the thoughts of Emmanuel Macron on Saturday when it seemed Boris Johnson might once more occupy No. 10. Hasta la Vista, baby. Oh Mon Dieu, non! Macron’s opinion of the former PM is on record, and the French in general were aghast at the prospect of Boris back in charge. One newspaper asked its readers in an online poll if they would welcome a second dose of Johnson: of the 240,000 people who responded, three-quarters said no. There was a time when BoJo was all the rage in France. In the summer of 2021 he was more popular than Macron – not hard, admittedly, given his unpopularity in many quarters – but eventually the French concluded that their president was right: Johnson is a clown. The events of recent weeks have bemused the French.

Last Sunday I marched through Paris with tens of thousands of disgruntled Frenchmen and women. I was there to observe, not holler and sing like those around me, a mix of Socialists, Communists and Greens. They had much that they wanted to get off their chest: the cost of living, ‘climate inaction’, the war in Ukraine, the state of the health system and their opposition to social security reform. On Thursday it was the right who marched in Paris, led by Éric Zemmour, on the streets to voice their anger about the horrific murder of a 12-year-old in Paris. They see it as symptomatic of an immigration system they claim is broken.

Two years ago on Sunday Samuel Paty was brutally murdered by an 18-year-old outside his school in a Parisian suburb. The teacher’s crime was to have shown an image of the prophet Mohammed during a class discussion on the freedom of expression.   Paty’s killer was a Chechen, and it’s noteworthy that the two other major Islamist terror attacks in France in recent years – the murder of three worshippers in a Nice church and the killing of a policewoman in Rambouillet – were also the work of foreign-born terrorists.   Homegrown Islamic terrorists are now a rarity in France.

Contrary to popular myth, on the English side of the Channel, at least, the French can queue. Across the country thousands of men and women have for days sat patiently in their vehicles waiting their turn to fill up their tanks with petrol. Tempers have frayed on occasion, which is no surprise given what is at stake. An opinion poll on Wednesday stated that two in three French people’s livelihoods have taken a hit because of the petrol shortage, a consequence of strike action at four refineries and a storage facility because of a wage dispute. Nonetheless, the same poll disclosed that 42 per cent of people support the strike action, compared to 40 per cent who don’t, with the ire of people directed primarily at Emmanuel Macron and his government.

There should be a charity football match this evening in Paris between a team of MPs and an XI made up of former footballers, such as World Cup winner Christian Karembeu and the ex-Arsenal star Robert Pires. All proceeds – estimated to be around €35,000 (£32,000) – will go to a charity that protects children from online abuse. But on Tuesday evening several left-wing MPs withdrew because they couldn’t bring themselves to play in a team that, for the first time since the side was formed in 2014, contained some players from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.

Last month the new Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, shared online a brief video of a Ukrainian woman being raped in Piacenza by an African migrant. The reaction among Italy’s media and political elite was one of outrage; not at the fate of the 55-year-old woman, but at Meloni for having dared posted the footage on Twitter along with the declaration: ‘One cannot remain silent in the face of this atrocious episode of sexual violence against a Ukrainian woman carried out in daytime in Piacenza by an asylum seeker. A hug to this woman. I will do everything I can to restore security to our cities.