Gavin Mortimer | The Spectator columnists & writers

Paris Shortly before the first round of the French presidential election I was handed a campaign flyer by one of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s activists. On one side was his photo and on the reverse the headline: ‘With Jean-Luc Mélenchon another world is possible.’ What sort of world? A leftist utopia in which the minimum wage would be raised from its current €1,302 to €1,400 net per month, new hospitals would be built, the retirement age would be lowered to 60, and there would be a fixed price for petrol, food and energy prices. Oh, and there would also be a Sixth Republic. Quite how Mélenchon would pay for all this, given the state of the country’s finances (France’s national debt is 112 per cent of its GDP), wasn’t explained.

Forget Le Pen 2027

If Emmanuel Macron has any sense he will be back in the office this morning. Sunday night’s celebratory shindig was good while it lasted but the Fifth Republic has never faced such a parlous future, either socially or economically. One can only hope that the attack on a priest in a Nice church on Sunday morning, barely mentioned by the media, is not a harbinger of things to come for Macron’s second term. Of more general concern for France is the economic situation. Everything is rising, from the cost of petrol to the price of a baguette, and the war in Ukraine will only deepen the crisis in the months ahead. In an op-ed in last Thursday’s Le Figaro Agnès Verdier-Molinié, the director of an independent think-tank, expressed her dismay that throughout their campaigning neither Macron nor Marine Le Pen had addressed the ‘chasm of our public finances’.

Privilege vs poverty in the French election

In a few hours France will know who has won the presidential election. Macron, predict the polls – though Marine Le Pen’s National Rally remain convinced that the ‘voice of the street’ will sweep them to power. The truth, however, is that there will be no winner from this election. Macron told Le Pen during Wednesday’s live television debate that her wish to ban the headscarf would precipitate a ‘civil war’, but France is already at war with itself. Macron vs Le Pen is how it has manifested itself this month but the battle lines were first drawn a decade or more ago as the effects of globalisation began to bite in what is called la France Périphérique. These are the people who overwhelmingly vote for Le Pen, the men and women who live outside the cities and work in poorly paid jobs.

The gloves are off for Macron and Le Pen

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen clash tomorrow evening in an eagerly anticipated live television debate. The president has been accused of dodging the presidential campaign but it doesn’t seem to have harmed his chances of re-election, with the latest poll giving him a handsome ten point lead over his rival. If Le Pen is to pull off a shock victory in Sunday’s second round she will need to debate with far more finesse than she did in 2017. On that occasion she was given the run-around by Macron as 16.5 million viewers looked on. The pressure on her is immense but her campaign team say she is upbeat and relishing the prospect of a rematch with her nemesis. She has been rehearsing for this moment for months with one of her advisors – a graduate of ENA like Macron – playing the part of the president in rehearsals.

Who would want to lead such an angry France?

It was a day of protest in Paris on Saturday and I made it to four of the five demonstrations. I missed Extinction Rebellion’s morning outing to the boulevard Strasbourg Saint-Denis in the centre of the city. Once there hundreds staged a sit-in and blocked traffic with bales of hay for most of the day. Like their Anglo-Saxon brethren in Britain, the protesters in Paris believe the end of the world is nigh and they are aggrieved that neither Marine Le Pen or Emmanuel Macron appear to share their pessimism. There was little optimism on show at the Place de la Nation in the east of the capital where two rallies were being staged simultaneously. The larger of the two was against the extreme right and brought together several disparate organisations including the left-wing CGT union, SOS Racism and The Human Rights League of France.

The French elite are playing into Le Pen’s hands

The cry of ‘aux barricades’ is reverberating around France as the country’s political elite rush to form a Republican Front. There is diversity in the ranks of those lining up to prevent Marine Le Pen reaching the Élysée. Communists, Capitalists and past presidents and prime ministers have mobilised for Emmanuel Macron ahead of the second round on Sunday week. Who would have thought France would see the day when Nicolas Sarkozy, President ‘Bling Bling’ as he was nicknamed during his time in office, would find common ground with Fabien Roussel, the Communist leader, or for that matter a pair of Socialists in former president François Hollande and his PM Manuel Valls? Also issuing a call to arms against Le Pen is Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

France is set for serious social unrest

So it’s Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen once again, and for many millions of French that is a deeply depressing prospect. There were violent protests in the Brittany city of Rennes shortly after the result of the first round of voting was announced, as an estimated 500 people vented their anger against ‘fascism’ and ‘capitalism’. Around the same time I received a call from my sister-in-law in the south of France. She was in despair, this working-class socialist, at once more being forced to choose between Macron and Le Pen. But it’s her ilk who will decide the outcome of the second round on 24 April. Jean-Luc Mélenchon received 21.9 per cent of the vote – approximately 7.6 million ballots – of whom the majority were 18 to 34 year-olds.

The strange revival of France’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is on the march once more, rising up the polls and laying bare the ineptitude of the Socialist party. While their candidate in the presidential election, Anne Hidalgo, is stuck on two points, Mélenchon is on 17, behind only Marine Le Pen, on 23, and Emmanuel Macron on 26. It was a similar story in the 2017 election when the veteran left-winger received 19.6 per cent of votes in the first round, while the Socialist party’s Benoît Hamon mustered a risible 6 per cent. There’s a contradiction to Mélenchon in that while at 70 he is the oldest candidate in the race, he is the most technical savvy in getting his message across. On Tuesday evening he repeated his 2017 hologram trick, addressing an audience live at the Grand Palais in Lille while his 3D image was beamed onto stages in 11 towns or cities across the country, from Le Havre in the north to Nice in the south.

Progressives vs populists: Macron, Orban and Europe’s faultline

As soon as Emmanuel Macron was sure that Joe Biden had won the American election, he tweeted: ‘We have a lot to do to overcome today’s challenges. Let’s work together!’ There was no effusive tweet this week from the Élysée when 54 per cent of Hungarian voters re-elected Viktor Orban as Prime Minister for a fourth term. The silence from Macron was deafening. Not so his principal rival in France’s impending election. On Sunday evening Marine Le Pen tweeted an old photo of the happy couple shaking hands with the declaration: ‘When the people vote, the people win!’ Le Pen will hope that Orban’s victory is a good omen ahead of Sunday’s first round of voting; they have much in common – a shared vision of the future, what Orban described in his victory speech as ‘Christian Democratic, middle-class conservative and patriotic politics’.

Macron has taken this election for granted

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The politics of war crimes

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The Edition

The politics of war crimes

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Could Marine Le Pen actually win?

Emmanuel Macron is worried. This wasn’t how he had envisaged the election. A month ago the president of France held a staggering 18 point lead in the polls and, as he looked over his shoulder in the home straight, he could barely make out Marine Le Pen in the distance. Now the gap is four points and she is breathing down his neck as the finish line approaches. Le Pen is one of Europe’s more interesting politicians. The daughter of Jean-Marie, the founder of her National Front party – which she rebranded National Rally in 2018 – and the aunt of Marion Maréchal, she has always been considered something of a political second-rater. She made it through to the second round of the 2017 election, mainly because the centre-right and centre-left candidates were so hopeless, but was destroyed by Macron in the live televised debate three days before the final vote.

Was another tragic Jewish death covered up in France?

Not for the first time in France the death of a Jew is dominating the news, and not for the first time there are whispers of an attempted cover-up. Several candidates in Sunday’s election have paused from their campaigning to air their views on the death of Jeremy Cohen, a 31-year-old who was struck by a tram in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris. The candidates portrayed by the commentariat as ‘extreme right’ were the most direct. ‘Did he die because he was a Jew?’ tweeted Eric Zemmour, himself a Jew. ‘Why is this case hushed up?’ Marine Le Pen also wondered on social media if ‘what was presented as an accident could be an anti-Semitic murder’. Then she tweeted what many Jews in France will be thinking ‘How to explain the silence on this affair and its motivations?’ The Gaullist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan claimed the ‘violence was hidden for pre-electoral reasons’.

Macron is the Messiah for French millennials

Emmanuel Macron welcomed the faithful to Paris on Saturday at a rally in the west of the capital. I know the venue well; it is the home of the Racing 92 rugby club and many a time I’ve sat in the indoor arena, roaring my approval at a bone-crunching tackle. The hollering on Saturday was for the president as he held his first and only significant campaign event before next Sunday’s election. It wasn’t quite a full house, with a few untaken seats in the 30,000 capacity arena, but the fervour reverberated around the arena as Macron made his grand entrance. It was like a boxer approaching the ring in a title fight. A warm-up act had whipped the crowd into a frenzy and as Macron emerged from his dressing room, music blasted and fireworks exploded.

Could Le Pen snatch victory from Macron?

When the attacks commence it’s clear that Marine Le Pen’s enemies are unnerved. For months – actually make that five years – few have viewed the leader of the National Rally as a serious contender for the 2022 presidential election. I include myself among that number, having declared on Coffee House in September 2017 that Le Pen ‘has no future’. More fool me. Along with many others, I underestimated her tenacity, her resilience and her sheer bloody-mindedness in refusing to throw in the towel. Will her stubbornness be rewarded with a win against all expectation? There is gathering optimism in Le Pen’s camp that a political earthquake will be felt in France next month. Recent polls have detected a momentum shift.

France is strong where Britain and America are weak

Emmanuel Macron unveiled his campaign manifesto in a carefully orchestrated press conference on Thursday and his pledges to cut taxes and reform the welfare system dominated the headlines on Friday morning. But the president also touched on defence, promising that spending – €32.3 billion when he came to power in 2017 – will rise to €50 billion by 2025. Some of that money will be invested in cyber warfare technology, as well, presumably, on ammunition; if reports are to be believed the French army would run out of ordnance after four days of a major war. It’s a favourite pastime of Anglophones to mock the French military, though only those who don’t know their history indulge in such juvenile antics. The battle of Verdun cost the lives of around 375,000 Frenchmen in 1916, and in the summer of 1940 their soldiers fought bravely against the Nazi invader but were let down by the ineptitude of their high command.

Could France’s ‘forgotten’ voters hand Le Pen victory?

A short war in Ukraine would not suit Emmanuel Macron. The longer it lasts the longer the president of France can project to his people the image of the implacable wartime leader. So far so good. If the polls are to be believed, next month’s presidential election is a foregone conclusion; the latest poll has Macron on 31 per cent, way in front of his closest rival, Marine Le Pen, on 18 per cent. Despite such a dominant lead over the rest of the field, Macron’s campaign team insist that they are on their guard against complacency. The president will unveil his programme in its entirety on Thursday, just over three weeks before voters go to the polls in the first round of voting, and in the meantime his minions are out in the field distributing pamphlets on his behalf.

Why are British soldiers deserting to fight in Ukraine?

When my brother was an infantry officer in the early 1990s the soldiers under his command were hard men. Most hailed from the north-east of England; in an earlier era they might have mined coal for a living. They smoked and drank and swore, and they were superb soldiers, as they proved in South Armagh and in Bosnia. It’s safe to assume these men would have struggled as infantrymen in today’s British army. Even the word ‘infantrymen’ would cause problems today. Last year, the Ministry of Defence recruited for a director of diversity and inclusion (salary £110,000 per annum, compared to the £20,000 an infantryman is paid). Meanwhile, in November, it was disclosed that the RAF had dropped 'airmen' and 'airwomen' in favour of 'aviator'.

British fighters in Ukraine are brave but misguided

The first British volunteers have arrived in Ukraine to ‘do their bit’ in thwarting the Russian invasion. According to reports in this morning’s newspapers, four serving soldiers are among them. Liz Truss must be heartened. The Foreign Secretary recently declared her support for any idealistic Briton wishing to head east to fight ‘for democracy’. Others were less enthusiastic at the prospect of Britons joining the war, notably Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, himself a former soldier. Also unenthused was Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, who cautioned: ‘This isn't really something that you want to rush to in terms of the sound of gunfire. This is about sensible support based in the UK.

Putin’s invasion has collapsed the French right

At the time it probably felt like a good idea for Marine Le Pen’s campaign team. A photo of her shaking hands with Vladimir Putin, taken when she met the Russian president in Moscow in 2017, would emphasise to the electorate that she was a serious player on the world stage. The photo was included in Le Pen’s campaign manifesto, over one million of which have been distributed the length and breadth of France. Now they are being hastily withdrawn by party members as Le Pen does her best to distance herself from the most despised man in the West. Le Pen is not the only presidential candidate to have been embarrassed by events in Ukraine. Eric Zemmour, her right-wing rival, had started to see his campaign gather some momentum last month but he has now fallen back in the polls, losing three points in a week.

What’s behind the wave of French police suicides?

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last week the western media has focused on little else. In Britain this concentration is understandable: the country has finally come out of Covid and there is a large gap to be filled on the airwaves and in the newspapers. Not so in France, still encumbered by Covid restrictions, where in just over five weeks voters go to the polls in the first round of the presidential election. As much as the French are troubled by events in Ukraine – a recent poll reported that 88 per cent of those canvassed were ‘shocked’ by the Russian invasion – they will vote on issues closer to home: the rising cost of living, immigration, the health service, and crime and violence. None of these issues are now being discussed in the media, or by the candidates.

Is the New York Times right to say Muslims are fleeing France?

Has the New York Times found a new bête noire? It was for a number of years Britain, damned for having had the temerity to leave the European Union. As Steerpike noted, the Sceptered Isle became a ‘plague-riddled, rain-drenched fascistic hell-hole’. But now it is the turn of France to receive a finger-wagging from the Gray Lady. Last week the NYT ran a lengthy article entitled ‘The Quiet Flight of Muslims from France’, in which it claimed that a growing number of French Muslims are emigrating because of the hostility they have experienced since the wave of Islamist terror attacks in 2015 and 2016 that left more than 200 French people dead. One man of Algerian origin who has relocated to Philadelphia told the paper he ‘no longer felt safe’ in France.

Why the French right prefer Putin to progressives

Emmanuel Macron's visit to Moscow last week was reminiscent of a trip made by Charles de Gaulle to the Russian capital in November 1944. Neither man left much of an impression on their host. Macron, after six hours of talks with Vladimir Putin, failed to persuade the Russian president to de-escalate the situation on the Ukrainian border whatever he might have claimed to the contrary. De Gaulle, the leader of the recently-liberated France in 1944, made little headway with Stalin, who subsequently told the American ambassador Averell Harriman that he found the Frenchman ‘an awkward and stubborn man’. That description must have struck a chord with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. At the final banquet for the French delegation Stalin toasted the British Prime Minister and American President but neglected to raise his glass in de Gaulle’s honour.

Might Macron’s future rest with the England rugby team?

After two rounds of the Six Nations, France is the only unbeaten team. Their victory against Ireland in a ferocious encounter in Paris on Saturday evening keeps them on course for the championship title. The last time France won the Six Nations crown was in 2010. The decade that followed was not kind to the national team. One might say their decline mirrored that of the country in general. They became a laughing stock, finishing bottom of the Six Nations in 2013 and suffering embarrassing defeats to the likes of Tonga and Fiji. Everything about the French team was amateur — their preparation, their fitness, their technique — compared to the clinical professionalism of their Six Nations rivals such as England, Ireland and Wales.

Shadows of Macron: could Valérie Pécresse become France’s first female president?

Paris Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Valérie Pécresse’s presidential election campaign is that it’s better than the Socialist party’s. Which is to damn with faint praise. The French left are in such a dire state that if the opinion polls prove correct, their candidate, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, won’t pass the 5 per cent mark in the first round required for candidates to recoup half their campaign costs. Pécresse has no worry on that score but she has failed to inspire the electorate since she was selected as the nominee for the centre-right Les Republicans (LR) in December. An opinion poll this week had her trailing Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, with Éric Zemmour only one point behind her on 14.

Can Macron really lecture Putin about democracy?

A penny for the thoughts of Vladimir Putin on Monday as he stared at Emmanuel Macron from the end of a very long table. If the Russian leader has a sense of irony he might have been struggling to suppress a smirk as he welcomed the President of France to Moscow to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Macron was in his element as he played the international statesman representing the EU, but the President will be dismayed to learn that his grandstanding has not impressed the folks back home. Of the 140,000 who have so far responded to an online poll in Le Figaro, 60 per cent considered his visit to Moscow a failure. It doesn't appear to have yet dawned on Macron and many other western leaders that the days of dispensing lessons in democracy to despots are over.

Eric Zemmour isn’t to blame for France’s anti-Semitism crisis

Emmanuel Macron sees anti-Semitism everywhere except where it really lurks. Earlier this month his government accused protesters opposed to the Covid Passport of giving the Nazi salute, a charge that was disproved by video footage and this week dismissed by the public prosecutor’s office in Paris. Yesterday, in a speech to mark International Holocaust Day, Macron warned of the return of ‘an ill wind’ blowing through the continent in some ‘political discourse’. He vowed that France would never cease to honour the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust ‘particularly when some try to falsify it.’ Macron's Prime Minister, Jean Castex, spoke on similar lines during a commemoration at Auschwitz, stating that recent history has shown where ‘political posturing’ can lead.

Macron’s vaccine culture war

When French prime minister Jean Castex and health minister Olivier Véran held a press conference last week, they outlined the timetable for a gradual easing of the country's many Covid-19 restrictions. Véran talked of an 'encouraging evolution' in the fight against the virus, despite the fact that France had in the previous week recorded an average of over 300,000 daily cases. As of 2 February, the wearing of masks outdoors will no longer be mandatory; a fortnight later, the French will be able to experience once more the pleasure of standing at a bar with a glass of whatever takes their fancy. Since the start of this month, this practice has been outlawed. Why a customer standing in a bar is at greater risk from Covid than one who is sitting has never been adequately explained.

Cheer up Boris, the French still like you

If, as many are predicting, the wheels are about to come off Boris Johnson's premiership, few world leaders will be as indifferent as Emmanuel Macron. He and the PM have rarely seen eye to eye. It may very well have been more than just a coincidence that Johnson yesterday declared Britain was 'open for business' just as France's full vaccine pass came into force. The contrast is clear, as the Prime Minister surely intended. While Britain — or at least, England — is emerging from the Covid crisis, France, has in place some of the most stringent restrictions in the West. Masks remain mandatory outdoors and adults without three jabs to their arms can do little other than shop for groceries or go for a walk in the park.