Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.
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What a forty eight hours it has been for Emmanuel Macron. On Monday, he gave his regal address to the National Assembly at the Palace of Versailles, a grandiose occasion during which the French president rivalled Tony Blair and Barack Obama for swaggering self-confidence. As Jonathan Miller said in the Spectator, it’s hard not to be
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Was that a touch of gloating I detected last night as I watched the news on French television? The lead item was Donald Trump’s acceptance of President Macron’s invitation to attend the Bastille Day commemoration in Paris next month. It’s always a prestigious occasion and this year marks the centenary of America’s entry into WW1. Hence
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Islamic State will be delighted by what happened outside Finsbury Park mosque in the early hours of Monday morning. In the space of three months they’ve achieved in Britain what they failed to pull off in France during five years, and provoked a retaliatory act. This is what they want. When the Syrian intellectual, Abu
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It says much about the extraordinary rise of Emmanuel Macron that some commentators are describing the outcome of Sunday’s second round of voting in the parliamentary elections as something of a disappointment for the new president. His La République en Marche [LREM] party won an estimated 359 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly,
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En Marche, a party created 14 months ago by Emmanuel Macron, is on course for a clear majority in the French elections – after the collapse of the socialist party. His party looks on course to win 70pc of the seats in the National Assembly – an astonishing outcome, one of the many election results
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It’s in the little gestures one learns much about a man, and such is the case with Emmanuel Macron. Since his anointment as president of France last month, the 39-year-old has held talks with Angela Merkel, Recep Erdogan, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Those tête-à-têtes have made the headlines but it’s what happened in Paris
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If there’s one country that knows how Britain feels in the wake of last week’s suicide bombing in Manchester, it’s France. Similar horror has been visited on the French several times in the past five years with nearly 250 slaughtered at the hands of Islamic extremists, so the French are all too familiar with the grief,
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Édouard Philippe is the perfect fit to be Emmanuel Macron’s Premier Minister. A one-time Socialist who then switched to the centre-right Les Républicains, the 46-year-old mirrors the ambiguity of his president. Philippe has been the mayor of the northern port town of Le Havre since 2010 and the region’s MP for the last five years.
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The golden girl of the National Front has gone and with her go the grassroot hopes for an alternative to Marine Le Pen. The decision of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen to withdraw from political life wasn’t entirely unexpected, rumours first emerged earlier in the year, but it is nonetheless a heavy blow for the party rank
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So what now for Marine Le Pen and the National Front? On an evening when the party polled a record number of votes in a French election, twice as many as when they reached the second round in 2002, there was little sense of triumph away from the cameras. ‘There’s obviously a bit of disappointment,
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Emmanuel Macron is the eighth and the youngest president of the Fifth Republic, winning an estimated 65pc of the vote in the second round of voting. It caps an astonishing rise for the 39-year-old former investment banker who only founded his En Marche! party in April last year. The news was greeted with delirium by
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There were times during last night’s televised debate between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron when it resembled more a playground slanging match than a pitch to become president of France. The National Front leader and her En Marche! counterpart traded insults, exchanged stares and did their best to shout each other down during two-and-a-half hours
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Bad weather swept across southern France over the May Day holiday but summer is just around the corner and with it will come the burkini. Last week, a call was issued to burkini-wearers to gather at the Cannes film festival later this month, with the organiser saying it will be the perfect moment ‘to celebrate
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France is in a flap and Emmanuel Macron is to blame. On Sunday evening the En Marche! leader looked for all the world like a man who believed he’d already been crowned king. Bounding onto stage with a wink, a wave and a smile to his adoring supporters, after his first round victory, he then
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After their humiliation with Brexit and Donald Trump, the pollsters returned to form in France with their predictions of a Macron and Le Pen first round victory. If the polls are as accurate with their forecast for the second round, then the new president of France will be the centrist Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old is
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Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face each other in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday May 7th after the two finished neck-and-neck in the first round of voting. With votes still to be counted, there are slight discrepancies in the final percentage, but according to a Harris Interactive exit poll
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With less than twenty four hours before polling booths open in France, the country’s security forces are on full alert for another attack by Islamist extremists. More than 50,000 police and 7,000 soldiers have been mobilised as part of the massive security operation but they still lack the resources to safeguard every polling station. In
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Last night, an Islamic terrorist opened fire with an assault rifle on a police van on the Champs Élysées in Paris, killing one policeman and wounding two others before he was shot dead. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack and according to the French newspaper, Le Parisien, the gunman was a 39-year-old called Karim
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The news on Tuesday that French security services have prevented another attack by Islamic extremists should come as no surprise given the proximity of the election. Nor should the fact that according to police sources the intended target was François Fillon. When police raided the apartments in Marseille of the two suspects, they reportedly discovered
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It was the 34th annual convention of France’s Muslims at the weekend in le Bourget, just north of Paris, and the main topic of conversation was the upcoming presidential election. Five years ago, when François Hollande beat Nicolas Sarkozy to become president, the Socialist candidate benefited from 86 per cent of the Muslim vote. That won’t
