Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
From our UK edition
The new year has not started well for Emmanuel Macron. It began badly when some bright spark in the Elysée thought it would be a good idea to mark France’s six-month presidency of the European Union by unfurling the bloc’s blue and gold flag under the Arc de Triomphe. Millions of French were not amused
From our UK edition
My daughter’s Christmas won’t quite be the same this year. She and I are in England but her French mother has been prevented from making the trip by her president. It’s a funny world when hundreds of people can quite easily cross illegally from France to England in small boats – 1,200 in four days
From our UK edition
Two years ago this week I wrote a piece for Coffee House entitled ‘Corbyn may be a goner but his ideology is as strong as ever’. The thrust of my argument was that gloating over the demise of Magic Grandpa and his Momentum mob was premature, and what we call woke culture was ‘no passing
From our UK edition
Emmanuel Macron subjected France to a two-hour primetime television interview on Wednesday evening which must have been a pre-Christmas treat for the nation. Just under four million tuned in to see Macron discussing his achievements as president in what was a polished performance; not since Tony Blair has a world leader been such a consummate
From our UK edition
Eric Zemmour enjoyed a propitious weekend as he embarked on his first official overseas visit as a presidential candidate. It began with the endorsement of Philippe de Villiers, an influential businessman and political commentator (and the brother of Pierre, the chief of the defence staff who quit in 2017 after falling out with Emmanuel Macron).
From our UK edition
The best way to describe Valérie Pécresse is Emmanuel Macron in a blouse. The newly-elected candidate for Les Republicans (LR) swears she is the French president’s polar opposite, but ideologically there is little to separate the pair. The 54-year-old Pécresse, who will now stand against Macron in next year’s presidential election, has been on the
From our UK edition
George W Bush will forever be in debt to The Donald. Before Trump became the 45th president of the United States, the man nicknamed ‘Dubya’ was widely considered by many Americans to be the most inept. Then came Trump. No longer was Bush a clown. The American left forget how they’d demonised him and looked
From our UK edition
So it’s official: Eric Zemmour will stand as a candidate in next year’s French presidential election. It was hardly a shock when he launched his campaign this morning with a video that was the visual equivalent of a Michel Houellebecq novel. Nearly seven years ago, Houellebecq’s novel, Submission, depicted an incipient civil war in France
From our UK edition
Last month on Coffee House I drew attention to the inconsistency in how Europe responded to the migrant crises in Belarus and France. Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, was accused of ‘weaponising’ Middle Eastern migrants seeking to enter Europe at his country’s border with Poland, but no government dared criticise France for the chaos
From our UK edition
It’s not often you find Eric Zemmour plastered across the front of Closer magazine. Brigitte Macron, Beyonce and Lady Gaga are the preferred darlings of the celebrity magazine. But this week’s issue – which is selling like gâteaux chaud in France – has on its cover Zemmour and his 28-year-old paramour Sarah Knafo and underneath
From our UK edition
Yesterday’s tragedy in the Channel has been ten years in the making. The British tabloids this morning are inevitably pointing the finger at the French for the deaths of 27 migrants who drowned after their dinghy sank not far from Calais, but that lets off the hook those who ultimately bear responsibility for the migrant
From our UK edition
Right-wing Frenchman Eric Zemmour, who is expected to run for the presidency of his country next year, has been designated persona non grata in London by the city’s mayor. ‘Nobody who wants to divide our communities or incites hatred against people because of the colour of their skin or the god they worship is welcome in
From our UK edition
Emmanuel Macron told his people last summer they would have to learn to live with Covid. A year-and-a-half on, France is unrecognisable to the country it once was: Covid passports are in force and face masks remain mandatory in many places. The president of France is not alone among Western leaders in his uncompromising approach to
From our UK edition
It was hard not to laugh, coldly, at the statement from western members of the UN Security Council that condemned Belarus for engineering the migrant crisis on its border with Poland. Following Thursday’s emergency UN Security Council meeting, western members published a joint statement, accusing Belarus of putting migrants’ lives in danger ‘for political purposes’.
From our UK edition
A day after the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, was harassed as she left the London School of Economics, a murder trial in France reached its grisly conclusion. Yacine Mihoub was handed a life term after being convicted of stabbing 85-year-old Mireille Knoll multiple times and then setting her body alight in March 2018.
From our UK edition
A French police officer was attacked with a knife in Cannes this morning. The victim – whose bullet-proof vest saved him from serious injury – was at the wheel of his stationary car when the assailant opened his door and plunged the weapon into his body. There are reports that the attacker uttered the words ‘in the name
From our UK edition
A decade ago, French-bashing was all the rage. David Cameron famously declared Britain would ‘roll out the red carpet’ for those fleeing the steep tax hikes proposed by the newly elected Socialist president François Hollande. The French economy continued to be a source of derision for the British, culminating in the managing director of John
From our UK edition
There are several similarities between Eric Zemmour and the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, and one distinct difference. The Dutchman was homosexual and an ardent campaigner for gay rights, whereas the Frenchman, who has three children, recently reaffirmed his opposition to gay marriage. But on Islam and immigration they had much in common. Fortuyn, for example,
From our UK edition
The received opinion is that Islam and immigration are Éric Zemmour’s prime targets as his putative presidential campaign gathers pace. But he has a third mortal enemy, and that’s the Anglophone world. Éric doesn’t much like us. But then Éric doesn’t much like anyone who’s not, as his sort are wont to say, Français de souche. Zemmour’s rabble-rousing is
From our UK edition
In the summer of 2020 the French Senate published a report on the ‘Development of Islamist Radicalisation and the means of combatting it.’ It was a wide-ranging review which included contributions from academics, writers, Muslim associations and politicians. Among those interviewed by the commission were the ex-security advisor Alexandre del Valle, Zineb El Rhazoui, a
