Europe

France endured its worst night of rioting yet on Thursday as violence continued across the country. For the third consecutive evening, youths went on the rampage in most major cities, despite the presence of 40,000 police. Shops were looted, town halls attacked, police stations firebombed and vehicles were hijacked in extraordinary scenes of urban warfare. The police fought running battles with mobs and made 421 arrests, over half of which were in the capital. The epicentre of the anarchy was in Nanterre, in the west of the city, where on Tuesday morning 17-year-old Nahel was shot dead by police as he sped away from a traffic stop.  The officer who

The government’s loss in its Rwanda appeal spells trouble for Rishi Sunak. But liberals are delighted: ‘Massive result,’ said the barrister Adam Wagner after the Court of Appeal ruled that would-be asylum seekers cannot be sent to the African country while their claims are processed. Sunak plans to seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court – but his pledge to ‘stop the boats’ looks to be in trouble. Or is it? There is more to today’s decision than meets the eye. The victory hardly resounding. Of the five grounds of appeal, ranging from super-technical ones like retained EU law and data protection issues to more general issues of conditions in Rwanda,

‘The left is sweeping to power across Europe,’ suggested the headline in the Independent in September 2021. The newspaper called on the analysis of Denis MacShane, the former Labour MP, to explains to its readers why this was so. MacShane posited that the election of Joe Biden as US president had reinvigorated the left-wing electorate while the population at large were voting for parties who were dealing with climate change most vigorously.   Eighteen months later and red has become an endangered colour in European politics. The latest blow to the left was in Sunday’s Greek general election; not only was the centre-right Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis re-elected with over

Numerous heads of state from the third world are in Paris for a summit hosted by President Macron. The aim of the conference – or the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact to give it its full lofty name – is to ‘address the needs of developing countries in the fight against poverty.’ Is France, or indeed the rest of the West, in a position to dish out advice to developing nations?   The days of Europe being able to lecture developing countries about efficiency, integrity and prosperity are long gone. It was bleakly ironic that on the eve of the summit Paris was rocked by a huge gas

Civilisation’s last line of defence runs through the Élysée Palace. Emmanuel Macron has been lambasted by his opponents for necking a beer with Toulouse rugby players to celebrate their victory over La Rochelle in the Top 14 final. The video of le Président chugging down the offending brew has got mustard up the noses of French legislators across the political spectrum.  The Times reports that Socialist senator Laurence Rossignol condemned Macron for ‘a macho cliché’ while Gilbert Collard, an MEP for the far-right Reconquête, dismissed Macron’s actions as ‘showing off’. Green deputy Sandrine Rousseau accused the president of engaging in ‘toxic masculinity’. Far be it from me to tell my granny how to

Emmanuel Macron never does anything by chance, so why did he allow himself to be filmed downing a beer in one on Saturday night? The clip, which has gone viral, has angered puritanical progressives. Green MP Sandrine Rousseau has branded Macron’s behaviour ‘toxic masculinity’.  The president of the French Republic slaked his thirst just before midnight in the dressing room of the Toulouse rugby team in the Stade de France. Toulouse had beaten La Rochelle to win the French rugby championship, an event at which Macron had been introduced to the players before kick-off. He ducked out of a similar invitation in April at the final of the French football

There is a growing sense of unease in France that a new wave of Islamist terrorism will soon break over Europe. In February, Adel Bakawan, a Franco-Iranian specialist in Islamic extremism, said that the Islamic State is regrouping and is planning a mass casualty attack in ‘Berlin, London or Paris’. This week Thibault de Montbrial, president of the Centre for Reflection on Homeland Security, spoke in similar terms during a radio interview.   While Isis, or the Islamic State, no longer has a caliphate as it did between 2014 and 2019, it still has many fanatical followers scattered in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Referencing a report written by the Dutch intelligence

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Germany’s far-right populist party, is enjoying a surge in support. A poll by broadcaster ARD this month revealed that 18 per cent of voters backed the AfD – its highest rating since the party was founded in 2013. This level of support – which puts the AfD on level pegging with the SPD – is ringing alarm bells in Berlin. Since the end of the second world war, Germany’s post-war identity has been moulded around coming to terms with its history. Germans even have a word for it: ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’. The national mantra for eight decades has been ‘never again’. But is something sinister afoot in German

As the First Ashes Test begins at Edgbaston it is fitting to recall England’s oldest cricket adversary: France. The Marylebone Cricket Club’s (MCC) first ever international tour was scheduled for France in the summer of 1789. Owing to local difficulties the tour did not go ahead. The match was eventually rescheduled for the bicentennial of the French Revolution with France beating the MCC by seven wickets. In the space of a fortnight, we have witnessed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meeting with president Biden in Washington to announce ambitiously that Britain would lead on setting up international norms on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This was followed a few days later by president

Silvio Berlusconi, whose state funeral will take place today in Milan, was the first modern populist. The media tycoon became a politician to take back control of Italy from the establishment on behalf of the people. The Italians called him Il Cavaliere (The Knight). He created a brand of politics that decades later would become a new driving force in America and Europe and would be called populism. Berlusconi reminds me of Jay Gatsby, the tragic hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great novel Italians voted for him in their droves. Like Donald Trump, he was dead rich but loved by the dirt poor. He spoke their language: he loved beautiful football and beautiful women. He hated tax and red tape and fines and the big bad

As Russia frantically attempts to hold on to its territorial gains in the face of the much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, there are early signs that it is also failing to retain its diplomatic and foreign policy advances. The anti-Western energy alliances it had constructed around the world with many of the leading oil and gas producers, which had endured despite the invasion, are beginning to fracture. Its attempts to shutdown competitors to Russian oil and gas have proved futile. It all went wrong so quickly for Russia. Back in 2016, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) expanded to include Russia as part of OPEC+. The deal, painstakingly brokered by Saudi

There’s an irony in the timing of Silvio Berlusconi’s death at the age of 86, coming on the same weekend that saw the (at least temporary) exit from politics of Boris Johnson. For in many respects, the Cavaliere (‘Knight’) as he was universally known in Italy, was an even more flamboyant role model for our former prime minister. Berlusconi, who led four Italian governments, blurred the lines between showbusiness and politics until they became all but invisible – in much the same way Boris Johnson has in Britain. True, Boris may not yet be as wealthy as the billionaire Berlusconi, who was Italy’s third richest man. Boris’s short reign at the

‘Cead Mile Failte’, which means ‘a hundred thousand welcomes’, is a sentiment the Irish have long held dear.  We pride ourselves on our welcoming nature, our music, our famous pub culture and the fact that the average tourist will be almost overwhelmingly love-bombed by locals who are happy to see a new face and will want to regale them with tales of local lore.  But recently it seems that Ireland may have used up its welcomes and is, instead, retreating back into the dark terrain of nativism and suspicion of foreigners.  For a country that liked to boast about its welcoming nature, the last few weeks have seen the rise