James Tidmarsh

France seems to be witnessing more gratuitous attacks and stabbings. On Boxing Day afternoon, in the middle of central Paris, a man went on a knife rampage through the metro. He struck out at random, stabbing women on station platforms at République, Arts et Métiers and Opéra. There was screaming. There was blood. One of the victims was pregnant. There was no argument, no robbery, and no apparent motive. The attacks were entirely indiscriminate. Random violence has become part of the background noise of public life After each assault, the attacker didn’t run, he boarded the next train. Passengers recoiled. Doors closed. The train moved on. Station by station, through some of the busiest metro stations in the city, he continued.

Jordan Bardella has been physically attacked twice over the past five days. Flour was thrown over him at an agricultural fair in Burgundy, then this weekend an egg was crushed on his head at a book signing in Moissac in the Tarn-et-Garonne. He walked away unharmed, but the incidents could easily have been more serious. They come at a moment when Bardella leads the polls to become France’s next president, with Marine Le Pen increasingly sidelined after she was barred from running by the courts. Right-wing officials and politicians are facing a steady rise in insults, threats and physical aggression.

Bruno Retailleau, France’s former interior minister, has with his Senate group just published the toughest report on Islamism in a generation. They warn that Islamist networks have taken hold of entire swathes of French public life – from schools and sports clubs to student housing, neighbourhoods and councils. In the report, 29 Republican senators set out what they describe as a coordinated effort by Islamist networks to impose parallel norms and bypass republican authority.

France has spent decades telling itself the same comforting story: that the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants would become more French than their parents. Secular, republican, integrated. The older generation might cling to conservative religious values, but the young raised on liberté, égalité and fraternité would drift towards the mainstream. That assumption has taken a serious blow. A country that once prided itself on assimilating newcomers has spent the past several decades dismantling the very idea of a dominant national ethos According to a new IFOP poll, 57 per cent of French Muslims aged 15 to 24 place the rules of Islam above the laws of the Republic. This is up over 10 per cent since 2021. Nearly half express sympathy for Islamist movements.

Europe’s public broadcasters were created to stop propaganda. Born in the wreckage of war to protect democracy from lies, they now preach soft, sanctimonious, state-approved truths. The resignations at the BBC this week are only the latest symptom of decay across the European media landscape. The model built to keep power in check now serves it. Public broadcasting was conceived in the aftermath of 1945. After Goebbels and Vichy radio, democracies decided that truth needed its own institutions. The state would fund but not control them. Broadcasters like the BBC, Radiodiffusion Française, Germany’s ARD and Italy’s RAI would speak for the public. For decades, they did. They were calm, factual, balanced and above politics. The voice of reason had replaced the voice of the regime.

Every summer in small French towns from Créon in the Gironde to Salency in the Oise, a young woman dressed in white walks through the square, crowned with a wreath of roses. She’s the rosière, the rose queen, chosen by her town for her modesty, kindness and civic spirit. The crowning is part of the village fête, a day of processions, music and dancing that celebrates community life. The fêtes de la rosière date back to the fourteenth century, when Saint Médard, Bishop of Noyon, is said to have founded the first ceremony to reward the most virtuous girl of his village, meaning, in the language of the time, the most chaste and upright one. The tradition rested on Christian ideas of virtue, family, and duty. In the capital, culture is downstream of ideology.

Ten people have gone on trial in Paris accused of harassing France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, online. The defendants, eight men and two women aged between 41 and 60, are charged with ‘moral harassment by electronic means’ and mocking a false claim that she was born a man by the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux. Prosecutors say their posts, many of which mocked her marriage to the President and repeated the rumour about her gender, amounted to targeted abuse. In closing, prosecutors requested suspended sentences. The defendants deny wrongdoing.

Sébastien Lecornu’s government has survived a no-confidence vote – but only because Emmanuel Macron shelved the pension reform that once defined his presidency. Today’s motion of censure fell short of the 289 votes needed to bring down the government, sparing Macron for now but leaving his authority weakened. What began as a crusade for fiscal responsibility has ended in capitulation, exposing the fragility of his presidency. If the vote saved Macron in the short term, it exposed how completely he has lost control of his political base Out of 577 members of parliament, 271 voted for censure, leaving the government 18 votes short of collapse. It was not a narrow escape but a warning: proof that Macron’s majority no longer exists in any meaningful sense.

Emmanuel Macron’s presidency is imploding, squeezed between enemies he can no longer outmanoeuvre. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, joined by the Socialists, have united to force yet another no-confidence vote, this time set for Thursday. Once the master of France’s centre, Macron’s political survival hinges on a humiliating surrender of his flagship pension reform, or a headlong rush into legislative elections his party cannot win. Macron presents every decision as an act of duty, then retreats when his own powers are threatened. The result is a presidency that has lost its moral centre as well as its political one The Lecornu government 2.0 was meant to buy Macron time. Instead, it’s turned into a countdown to collapse.