Gavin Mortimer

Marine Le Pen sees plots everywhere. In her view the media, the Socialists, the judiciary and even the European Union have been conniving in recent months to enfeeble her presidential campaign. As she said during last week’s televised debate, ‘I’m politically persecuted’. But the plot with the potential to cause the greatest damage to the National

The presidential campaign is nothing if not a test of endurance for the French public although there were moments yesterday evening when the televised debate felt more like a punishment. For four hours, the eleven candidates talked, or to be more precise, shouted, interrupted and ranted at one another. It was, in the words of Le Figaro,

It’s just as well François Hollande won’t have the opportunity to meet Donald Trump in person before he leaves the Élysée Palace in early May. It will save the outgoing president of France any potential embarrassment. When Angela Merkel visited Washington earlier this month she stood in stony silence as the American president claimed in front

It was the burkini that brought Monday night’s debate to life between the five main presidential candidates for next month’s French election. For the first hour of the televised debate there had been much posturing and postulating but no sharp exchanges. That changed when Marine Le Pen accused Emmanuel Macron of turning a blind eye

I had an illuminating argument with a Socialist friend at the weekend. It began when I expressed my surprise that greater Paris has just passed a law compelling construction workers to speak only French. The ‘Moliere clause’ in the ‘Small Business Act’ requires all firms engaged in publicly-funded building projects to talk French. The intention

‘One cannot govern France,’ declared François Fillon last November, ‘if one is not irreproachable.’ A little over three months later, however, and the centre-right candidate for next month’s French presidential candidate has had a change of heart. The 62-year-old has today announced that he will be placed under formal investigation over allegations that during a period of several

As Emmanuel Macron stood on the steps of Downing Street on Tuesday urging Britain’s ‘banks, talents, researchers, academics’ to move across the Channel after Brexit, security services in France were dismantling yet another Islamic terror cell preparing to launch a terrorist attack. That makes three this month, a clear indication that the Islamists are itching to

Friday morning’s attack in Paris in which a machete-wielding man was shot and wounded in the stomach by a French soldier after he injured another soldier near the Louvre museum is the first terrorist incident in France since July. Then two teenagers murdered an elderly priest in his Normandy church, an attack that shocked and

The reaction in Europe to Donald Trump’s recent remarks critical of the continent was all too predictable. It was an echo of the response when, following the Islamic terror attacks in November 2015 that left 130 Parisians dead, Trump said: ‘Paris is no longer the same city it was….they have sections in Paris that are

It strikes me that it’s not much fun being a Catholic in France these days. Strolling back to my apartment in Paris on Christmas Eve, for example, I passed my local church. Inside a midnight Mass was in progress; outside a policeman stood guard. It was the same across France, an army of gun-toting men and

When Christine Lagarde stood before the Court of Justice of the Republic last week to defend herself against charges of criminal negligence in her handling of a long-running fraud case in France, the head of the IMF concluded: ‘I have acted in conscience, in confidence and guided by the general interest.’ But today, the court decided

Forgive me if I sound a touch complacent at the news that Francois Hollande has fallen on his sword. In announcing on Thursday night that he won’t be seeking re-election in the spring, Holland has become the first president in the 58-year history of the Fifth Republic to make such a decision. It was the

Yassine was one of the most popular teaching assistants at his primary school in Strasbourg. What is known in the French school system as an ‘animateur’, Yassine supervised the kids during their lunchbreak and in after-school activities. ‘Nice,’ ‘sociable’ and ‘attentive’ have been some of the words used by parents this week to describe the