Salut!

Job done for Macron? Not quite. There's more to be done to keep Le Pen out of the Elysée

Marine Le Pen has taken a break from the presidency of the Front National to concentrate on the election. She thinks this minor act of distancing herself from a toxic brand will widen her appeal for the second round on May 7. I hope the French see through this, but Emmanuel Macron must be made to realise, if he does not know it already, that it is only half-time. His perceived lead could be whittled away. I still think he will win, but not by the wide margin the earliest poll foresaw. My analysis for The National*.

I also offered a few thoughts to BBC Radio Ulster's Declan Lawn, who present the Evening Extra programme. My bit starts at 1:15:00 but be warned: it is only a bit ...
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France decides: the untried but civilised against the irredeemable

This morning, having turned in late last night grateful that Marine Le Pen had been denied first place in the opening round of the French presidential election, I awoke to the shaming realisation that she won handsomely in the Var, the part of France where I spend part of my year.

Happily, Le Lavandou was not one of the communes where this figurehead of a thoroughly rotten movement prevailed. All the same, she did well enough here to suggest I should keep a suspicious eye on those I know, but whose politics are unknown to me. Put simply: I could not be a friend of, or provide custom to, any supporter of the Front National. To those FN apologists who say the media portrays the party as far-right only in order to demonise it, please remember that few of its voters dispute the description and many adopt it. This is a party that still harbours people who regret the way WW2 ended.

This is how, summoning my guiding journalistic principle of objectivity in news reports, I hurriedly covered last night's event. The National's superb foreign desk injected any missing ingredients so it is a joint effort ...

The centrist Emmanuel Macron was on course to become the next president of France on Sunday after leading the poll ahead of the far-right Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting, according to immediate post-polling estimates.

France and the Presidentielle2017: an unedifying spectacle nears its finale

Could François Fillon, for all his allegedly criminal payments to family members from public funds, recover lost ground sufficiently to pull off a surprise win, reaching the second round of the French presidential election on Sunday and then beating whoever remains as his opponent in the May 7 runoff? It has to be said the choice facing the electorate is a pretty unappealing one. 'Who would you want operating on you?' Mme Salut's Fillon-supporting phsyiotherapist asked. 'A brilliant surgeon who didn't pay all his dues or an honest incompetent?' We'll see. Fillon could even benefit a little from speculation that he and supporters were the intended targets of two men arrested while apparently on the point of carrying out a terrorist attack on the campaign. As a race that seems wide open nears the finishing line, this is how I set the scene in a comment piece for The National* ...

An unsigned note left on the seat of a public bench in a small French Riviera resort read: "I would vote but prefer democracy."

Newspaper craftsmanship, real ale and memories of coalfield slagheaps: RIP John 'Gaffer' Wade

Gaffer is first left in this pre-historic photograph from Fleet Street; Jules is behind him ...

At first sight, this fond memory of a recently departed colleague and friend is one strictly for those who not only shared his trade of journalism but knew him. In fact, Julian Young's tribute to John Wade, known to most of us as Gaffer, stands as a rather special obituary that may well appeal to Salut! readers who never worked for a newspaper, didn't come from Mansfield and would not have recognised a single line of Gaffer's evocative 'Slagheaps of my Youth', which he would recite - to a reception that included morsels of thrown bread as well as admiration - at gatherings of old hands at The Daily Telegraph, splendid lunches that John tirelessly organised. Over to Jules, who now lives in Paris but worked with this rather special man, whose funeral takes place in London on Wednesday ...

Nikki Haley: a rare human face in Trump's team?

It may well be the case that the United States can hardly bemoan - and punish - a horrific chemical attack in Syria, whether or not it will ever be proved to have been the work of the hideous Assad, while also dropping a gigantic bomb in Afghanistan that must have put countless innocent lives at risk. But I would admit that Nikki Haley's* performance at the UN Security Council, while theatrical, was striking. i hope she will turn out to be a restraining force on a deeply worrying president ...

London attack, Khalid Masood and the shortsightedness of 'lone wolf' theories

Photo of Khalid Masood: from Scotland Yard

Some further thoughts occurred to me on the murderous London attack perpetrated by Khalid Masood, just his latest alias, on March 22. From my regular comment column for The National ...

The Westminster killer Khalid Masood, who began life as Adrian Russell Elms, had no known links with ISIL or Al Qaeda, according to British police.

At first glance, this may seem at odds with the ISIL’s admission of responsibility. An online communique, dressed up in now familiar if squalid terminology, described Masood as a "soldier of Islam" responding to exhortations to kill citizens of the United States-led coalition fighting it in Iraq and Syria.

In fact, there is no inconsistency. ISIL has been driven to adopt developing methodology by the growing difficulty of directing, from the Middle East, teams of terrorists on foreign missions.