James Tidmarsh

Emmanuel Macron is cornered, his presidency unravelling under relentless pressure. From left and right, there are demands to dissolve the National Assembly or for Macron himself to resign. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s resignation after just 27 days has shattered Macrons fragile coalition. The man who once straddled France’s political divide now faces its united wrath. Yet, in a cruel irony, Macron’s survival may hinge on his nemesis, Marine Le Pen. By calling an election and letting her National Rally form a government, Macron could cling to the Élysée, his power gutted but his title intact, saved by the National Rally he vowed to destroy.

A Paris court has sentenced France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy to five years, three of which must be served behind bars, for criminal conspiracy tied to alleged Libyan funding of his successful 2007 presidential campaign. He’ll be imprisoned within weeks, irrespective of any appeal. The image of a former French president heading to prison is brutal and France is shaken by it. The law is being used not just to punish, but to shape the field of politics. What makes today’s decision extraordinary isn’t just the verdict. It’s the court’s choice to immediately enforce its judgment. Appeal or not, Sarkozy will be behind bars. This so-called exécution provisoire is the French legal mechanism that strips an appeal of its usual suspensive effect.

As Emmanuel Macron took to the global stage to recognise Palestine at the UN, over 80 defiant left-wing mayors back home turned their town halls into protest zones, draping them with Palestinian flags in open rebellion against a government ban. They call it solidarity. In truth, it's brazen political theatre. Outgoing interior minister Bruno Retailleau had rightly ordered prefects to halt this, declaring public spaces must stay neutral, not tools for the left's divisive games. By turning their buildings into platforms for international causes, town halls betray the very neutrality that holds the Republic together In France, raising a Palestinian flag has become less about the Middle East than domestic politics, a way for the left-wing to posture.

Emmanuel Macron has named Sébastien Lecornu, a loyal confidant, as France’s new prime minister after François Bayrou’s resignation. At 39, Lecornu is Macron’s last stand, a bid to reset a deadlocked presidency. Lecornu is one of Macron’s most trusted allies. His appointment is a deeply personal choice, signalling that Macron is circling the wagons and relying on his innermost circle as the crisis deepens. Lecornu is not a compromise candidate or a unifying figure, he’s Macron’s man, appointed to hold the line and protect the president’s political legacy. Lecornu inherits a fractured parliament, a looming budget crisis and a country on the brink of strikes. There is no doubt that he is accepting a poisoned chalice.

Emmanuel Macron projects authority, but he’s trapped. After the collapse of François Bayrou’s government yesterday evening, Macron faces a divided parliament, hostile blocs on both sides, and no obvious way forward. After the crushing no-confidence vote, Macron insists that he will appoint a new prime minister ‘in the coming days’. But appointing a successor without dissolving parliament won’t resolve anything. Without a clear majority, any new government would face the same hostile Assembly and the same threat of immediate censure as his previous appointees. The numbers don’t change just because the names do. Each option Macron explores risks failure. Increasingly, it is Marine Le Pen, and the choices she makes, that will decide what happens next.

Prime Minister François Bayrou’s government has collapsed after a bruising no-confidence vote in the French National Assembly. MPs rejected his budget by a margin of 364 votes to 194, with 25 abstentions, forcing his resignation and plunging Emmanuel Macron’s second term into chaos. On Monday evening, the Élysée released a statement saying that Macron has ‘taken note’ of Bayrou’s fall and will name his successor ‘in the coming days’. The president will meet Bayrou to formally accept his government’s resignation. But naming a new prime minister without calling elections risks prolonging the very deadlock that has brought the country to this point.

Ministers are packing up their offices. Emmanuel Macron’s government, desperate to shift the narrative and rally support ahead of its confidence vote on 8 September, is now blaming baby boomers for the financial crisis. Prime minister Bayrou is reframing the crisis as the result of decades of policies favouring older voters: generous pensions, protected benefits, early retirement – all funded at enormous cost to younger generations.

A stolen scooter, a police chase, and a fatal crash left a 17-year-old of migrant background dead. Within hours, Lausanne erupted in the worst rioting Switzerland has seen in decades. Two nights of violence tore apart Switzerland’s image as a stable and quiet country. Masked youths, overwhelmingly black, took to the streets, setting bins alight, vandalising buses, and clashing with police using fireworks and stones. By the second night, more than 200 rioters clashed with Swiss police as tear gas clouded the air and water cannons roared through the city. It could very well have been a suburb of Paris or Lyon, but this was Lausanne, just along the lake from Geneva, in supposedly calm and orderly Switzerland.

One viewer whispered on the livestream: ‘Yes, keep going… Keep going’. Moments later, Jean Pormanove was dead. Last Sunday night around 10,000 people watched as 46-year-old Raphaël Graven slumped forward on camera, unresponsive. As he died the chat spiralled into a frenzy, as the moment was streamed from a quiet village north of Nice in the French Alpes-Maritimes. Nobody called for help. Nobody stopped the broadcast. By the time the authorities arrived in the once quiet village, Graven was dead.

As Parisians slowly return from their long summer breaks, locals are beginning to do what they do best: complaining. Montmartre, one of Paris's most visited neighbourhoods, has become the centre of a growing backlash against overtourism. ‘Behind the postcard: locals mistreated by the Mayor’, reads one banner in English. Another declares: ‘Montmartre residents resisting’. The neighbourhood around Sacré-Cœur, once Paris’s bohemian hilltop village, says it’s had enough. Tourists aren’t destroying Paris, they’re underwriting it.

France’s village fêtes are disappearing. A survey by the association Les Plus Belles Fêtes de France found that in just four years, nearly a third are no longer held. Once the highlight of rural life, they’re now falling victim to shrinking municipal budgets, falling household income, a chronic shortage of volunteers, endless administrative obstacles and rising security fears. In some places, tension between communities has turned violent. Only two summers ago, a teenager was murdered when a group of young men arrived to disrupt a fête. Elsewhere, fights break out so regularly that prefects now warn mayors to be ‘particularly vigilant’ during celebrations. For centuries, the fête was a rare moment when the whole village came together without suspicion.

‘It is in Alaska and in the Arctic that the economic interests of our countries converge and prospects for implementing large-scale mutually beneficial projects arise,’ said Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s long-time foreign policy adviser and former Russian ambassador to the United States, at a Friday press conference in Moscow. His words pointed to Arctic economic cooperation being firmly on the agenda when Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. For Trump, a massively important commercial deal of this kind is his typical negotiating strategy. It’s the ‘Art of the Deal’ – offer something big, lucrative and tangible, then leverage it to unlock political concessions.

The Swiss president and economy minister are rushing to Washington in a last-ditch attempt to reverse Donald Trump’s decision to impose a devastating 39 per cent tariff on Swiss exports. That decision landed in Bern with the force of a punch to the stomach. Officials were blindsided and the stock market and Swiss franc slumped. The tariff, higher than what the EU or UK received, threatens the very foundations of Switzerland’s export-led economy. With just one day to go before the tariffs come into effect, the mood in Bern is one of quiet panic. A country that once prided itself on independence is learning that deference earns no favours in the age of Trump Right up until the announcement Switzerland thought it had done everything right.

Police have been sent out to patrol France's seaside promenades. Not to chase hardened criminals – but to look for bare-chested tourists. From Les Sables-d’Olonne to Cassis, and in a growing number of coastal towns, local authorities are introducing by-laws banning shirtless men from wandering around in public. The fines are €150 if you’re caught walking from the beach to the bakery in swim shorts and flip-flops, but no shirt. Uniformed gendarmes have been instructed to enforce the rules. Posters have gone up at beaches. Police are stopping tourists, handing out tickets and giving lectures. The summer’s great threat to republican order, it seems, is the male torso.