Lifestyle A migrant camp in the most stunningly beautiful part of Paris is a good place to discuss the rise of the far-Right in France. Ahmad Hazrat, a 26-year-old fleeing the Taliban in his native Afghanistan, is sharing a mangled green charity tent with two friends on the Île St-Louis, the picture postcard island in the River Seine. Well-informed, and fluent in English, he dreams of getting out of President Emmanuel Macron’s troubled republic as soon as possible.
“Hatred is everywhere, and it’s getting worse,” he said. “We get moved on by the police all the time, and people insult us in the streets. “A few of the people I’ve travelled with once considered claiming asylum in France, but now we all want to get to Britain as soon as possible.
” The Paris Olympics start at the end of this month — the lavish opening ceremony will be a procession of boats carrying competitors up the Seine — and the French capital is hoping the multi-billion pound extravaganza will be even more impressive than London 2012. But, rather than sporting glory, it is the most divisive parliamentary election in living memory which has been dominating public debate. Last night, the ascendency of the far-Right National Rally (RN as they are known in France, for Rassemblement National) was halted as the always exceptionally accurate exit polls suggested they had won a maximum of 144 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly — the Paris equivalent of the House of Commons.
This was a long.