Gavin Mortimer

The government has deployed two aircraft to the Channel to detect and monitor small boats crossing under the cover of darkness. The planes, De Havilland Dash 8s, are equipped with hi-tech cameras and sensors and will give Border Force ‘eyes’ on the boats heading from France to England. The optimists within government hope that the aircraft’s ‘night vision capability’ will enable Border Force to identify and arrest the smugglers ferrying migrants across the Channel. After a period of inclement weather grounded the small boats, more stable conditions at the end of last week led to a surge in crossings: 621 migrants reached England on Thursday, 648 on Friday and 503 on Saturday.

There was a time when the French left turned its nose up at all things American. Too low-brow for them. Not now. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race has caused much joie de vivre in left-circles. For Mamdani, his youth is a virtue, but with Bardella it’s a weakness Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Gallic Bernie Saunders and the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, described Mamdani's win as ‘very good news’. The general secretary of the centre-left Socialist party, Olivier Faure, posted a smiley face on X above a headline in Le Monde, hailing Mamdani as ‘the youngest mayor in New York history’. Mamdani referenced his age during his victory speech in Brooklyn.

A man shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ drove his car into a crowd on France’s Ile d’Oléron this morning. At least ten people on the popular holiday destination – situated off the Atlantic Coast – were injured, and three are in a critical condition. Police arrested the driver, a 35-year-old man with a history of petty crime. A search of his vehicle revealed some gas cylinders. Among the injured is 22-year-old Emma Vallain, a parliamentary assistant to Pascal Markowsky, an MP in Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. A rising star in the party, she took part in a televised debate at the weekend about the current political deadlock in France.

Police in Paris have arrested two men after the "heist of the century" at the Louvre museum. According to the French press, the pair were arrested separately as they prepared to leave the country on Saturday evening; both are in their 30s and from Seine-Saint-Denis, the sprawling suburb north of Paris. As yet there is no indication that police have recovered any of the crown jewels that were stolen from the museum in seven sensational minutes last Sunday. The search for them and the two other gang members goes on. The 88 million euros ($102m) heist has been deeply embarrassing for France, and the fact that those responsible appear to be local villains as opposed to the international criminal masterminds that some had suggested will only further redden the Republic's face.

France is not a safe country. That was the excuse given by an Iranian man who returned to Britain last weekend a month after his deportation. The man was one of the first illegal immigrants to have been sent back to France as part of the ‘one in, one out’ deal agreed between the two countries this summer. The Iranian was detained on 6 August and deported on a scheduled flight on 19 September. He crossed the Channel last Saturday along with 368 other migrants, a handful of the 36,816 who have made the voyage this year, which is more than the figure for the whole of 2024.

It is just over three years since a 12-year-old Parisian girl called Lola was raped and murdered in a crime that shocked France. The woman accused of the murder, 27-year-old Dahbia Benkired, is now on trial and on Monday the court heard chilling evidence from a man who encountered the defendant shortly after the death of Lola. Karim Bellazoug told the court that Benkired was carrying a large trunk and told him she had items to sell. When he glanced inside he saw what looked like a body. ‘I thought she was crazy, that she was a psychopath,’ Bellazoug declared. The motivation as well as the mental state of Benkired will be examined as the trial continues, but the overarching question is beyond the court’s remit. It is a political question: why was Dahbia Benkired in France?

A year ago Donald J Trump was still roundly disliked by the French commentariat. Even the conservative Le Figaro newspaper held its Gallic nose in disdain, running a haughty article headlined "Trump, vulgarity runs rampant." The left still loathe the president of the United States but for the right in France he has become a role model. The same Le Figaro now writes approvingly of Trump and admits it got him wrong. "We expected an isolationist Trump, focused solely on American interests," it declared on Friday. "But in nine months, the president has established himself as a peacemaker in multiple international crises." The French perhaps more than any European nation have never got The Donald.

Is the Third Reich living rent-free in David Lammy’s head? Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister has accused Donald Trump of being a ‘neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’, likened the Tory European Research Group to Hitler’s National Socialists – and now he has claimed that Reform leader Nigel Farage ‘flirted’ with the Hitler Youth as a youngster. 'I will leave it for the public to come to their own judgements about someone who once flirted with Hitler Youth when he was younger,' Lammy said of Farage. Who knew Reform's leader – born in 1964 – had been around in 1930s Germany? In response to Lammy’s latest Nazi sighting, a Reform source told the BBC: ‘It's disgusting and libellous. Beneath contempt.

Giorgia Meloni has not cracked Italy’s migrant crisis. On the contrary, the number of migrants crossing the central Mediterranean is on the rise once more. A total of 47,313 migrants have crossed this year up to 12 September, which is 3,000 more than the same period in 2024. The vast majority makes land on the island of Lampedusa, like the 228 who disembarked on the small Mediterranean island on Sunday. Their three boats had departed from Zawiya and Homs in Libya, and the passengers were predominantly Egyptians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans. Lampedusa is struggling to cope with the numbers of arrivals despite a system of transferring the migrants to other reception centres in Italy.

As expected, the government of François Bayrou has lost its vote of confidence in the National Assembly. Three hundred and sixty-four MPs voted to bring down the centrist coalition government, ten months after Michel Barnier’s administration collapsed in similar circumstances. On that occasion 331 MPs cast their ballots against the Prime Minister. Bayrou has been a marked man since he unveiled his budget proposals in July, the objective of which was to slash €44 billion (£38 billion) in spending by 2026 in order to reduce France’s huge public debt. MPs from across the political spectrum condemned his budget. During an afternoon of impassioned debate in parliament, Bayrou had warned MPs: ‘You can get rid of the government, but you can’t get rid of reality.