Macron will face Le Pen in the French presidential election final round

Marine Le Pen has finished second in the first round of voting in the French presidential election and will go through to the second and final round of voting on 7th May to fight head to head with Emmanuel Macron.

With 96% of the votes counted Macron leads with 23.91% of the vote with Le Pen in second place with 21.42% of the vote. François Fillon is in third place with 19.94% of the vote and far left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in fourth place with 19.54%.

Opinion polling suggested that it might be a run-off between Le Pen and Mélenchon but the far left vote failed to hold up.

Macron's lead has widened as the last results have been trickling in but it will come down to the wire in the main event next month. Le Pen is likely to pick up a big chunk of Mélechon's eurosceptic and working class vote whilst Macron can expect to hoover up Fillon's conservative vote. The odds are stacked against Le Pen but even if she loses on 7th May today's result will send shockwaves through the pro-EU, pro-mass immigration political class in France and across the EU.

Knife attacker shouting Allahu Akhbar shot in Paris

A man has been shot after attacking a soldier with a machete whilst shouting "Allahu Akhbar" in Paris.

The man was refused entry to the Louvre with a suitcase and immediately pulled out a knife and shouted "Allahu Akhbar". He was then shot by one of the soldiers patrolling the Louvre although sadly not fatally.

French authorities have described it as a "serious security incident" but have yet to declare him mentally ill.

Rabbi stabbed in Strasbourg by Muslim shouting "Allahu Akhbar"

A Jewish man, identified locally as a Rabbi named Mr Levy, has been stabbed by a Muslim man who shouted "Allahu Akhbar" as he attacked him.

French police have said that the attack isn't terrorist related and ... wait for it ... the attacker "has a history of mental illness".

The standard response now to Islamic terrorism is to dismiss it as mental illness and it's not only farcical but dangerous to do so. Islamic terrorism is a very real danger and it needs to be taken seriously. Attempting to cover it up by describing every terrorist attack as the actions of a mentally ill person fools nobody and sends a message to Islamic extremists that no matter what they do there will be no wider consequences, no restrictions on their ability to import terrorism and radicalise.

Terrorists decapitate priest in French church

Two armed men have beheaded a priest and critically injured a nun in France before being shot dead by police.

The two men - described as wearing Islamic dress - entered a church in Normandy and took the priest, two nuns and two parishioners hostage. They murdered the priest, critically injured one of the nuns and were then killed by officers. The other three hostages escaped unharmed.

The church is currently being searched for booby traps.

Terrorist drives truck into crowds at #BastilleDay celebrations in Nice

A terrorist has driven a truck through crowds leaving a Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice killing at least 60 and injuring 100 more.

French officials have confirmed that it is a terrorist attack and that the driver is known to security services. There are unconfirmed reports of gunmen on the streets.

The EU political class have invited terrorists, rapists and murderers into Europe and denounced anyone who has warned of the danger as a racist or extremist. So successful have they been at this criminally irresponsible social engineering that women have lied about the identity of their rapists rather than admit that they were middle eastern. We are at war and the politicians who are supposed to be protecting us are leaving us defenceless. Serious action needs to be taken to stop the flow of people into Europe and to identify and remove those who are known to pose a risk to the public. No compromises, no human rights lawyers, just get them out and make us safe.

It's time to stand with our friends and neighbours in France against terrorist scum once again.

France can't legally terminate the treaty that allows UK officers to patrol our border in Calais

Project Fear is busy telling people that if we leave the EU the French will cancel the agreement that allows UK border officials to enforce border controls in France.

The Sangatte Protocol was signed in 1991 and allowed for juxtaposed border controls in France and the UK. This was a bilateral treaty signed by the French and British governments, it has nothing to do with our membership of the EU.

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (which both France and the UK signed) says that a treaty can only be terminated in accordance with the terms of the treaty or by mutual consent. There is nothing in the Sangatte Protocol that allows either France or the UK to terminate the treaty unilaterally so under international treaty law both France and the UK must agree to its termination.

The EU remainers portray the agreement with France as a one-sided affair that means we can police our borders in France and only we get any benefit but that's not the case. Under this agreement, the French border is moved to Dover and Folkestone where French officials police not only their own borders but the gateway to the Schengen zone from the UK. It's far from one-sided and the benefits of the agreement are felt across the 26 Schengen countries (4 of which aren't even in the EU).

There is no doubt that we get a lot of benefit from being able to police our frontier in France but we shouldn't downplay the benefit to France and the other 25 Schengen countries. If France were to illegally terminate the bilateral treaty that allows this arrangement as a punitive measure for leaving the EU then what would actually change? France would still have an obligation to provide border security and passport and visa controls on the French side of the border, regardless of whether the frontier was in France or England. The border would still be enforced but illegal immigrants who made it through French border controls would end up being caught and processed on UK soil rather than French. It would make the UK responsible for their deportation but outside of the EU we would have our own immigration laws under which to deport them without the EU courts thwarting every attempt at removing illegal immigrants as we are entitled to do under international law with those not claiming asylum in the first safe country they arrive in. While we're hobbled by the EU courts and EU laws the juxtaposition of borders has a lot of value but without that straightjacket its value is significantly diminished.

Tactical withdrawal by French socialists leads to defeat Front National

The French Front National have failed to take control of any regions in last week's elections after an unprecedented pact between the socialists and conservatives which saw candidates stood down to help keep Marine Le Pen's party out of power.

Last week's regional elections had overtones of recent elections this side of the channel where left and right have united to stop UKIP from challenging the status quo. The big difference here, of course, is that UKIP isn't a racist party.  But despite the efforts of Marine Le Pen to make her father's party more moderate since she took the helm, it's still some way from being transformed into the kind of moderate party that can gain enough mainstream support to win elections.

The decision by the Socialists to withdraw candidates from the second round of voting to help the conservative Republicans is controversial and undermines the democratic process. Voters marked their preferences knowing how the votes should be split between the Socialists, Republicans and Front National. So-called tactical voting belongs in the ballot box, it is wrong for parties involved in the election to manipulate the result with tactical withdrawals.

If Le Pen continues to reform her party between now and the next election, it is hard to see how they can fail to capitalise on the 6.8m votes it received this time round.

Cameron warns that terrorist attack on the UK is "highly likely"

David Cameron has warned that an attack on the UK is "highly likely" after the terrorist attacks on Paris.

French officials have so far confirmed that two of the terrorists entered Europe through Greece, posing as refugees. One of the terrorists - a Belgian resident who was able to take advantage of the non-existent border - is still on the run. At home, Theresa May and the Met Police Commissioner have casually announced that as many as 450 people who travelled to Syria to join ISIS have returned to the UK and that undercover armed police and soldiers will be patrolling public events and train and tube stations.

David Cameron's warning is nothing new - MI5 still have the UK national threat level set to "severe" which is what it's been since 2009. If an attack was imminent the threat level would be "critical". Cameron is unwilling to deal with mass immigration or abandon policies of appeasement but he is willing to protect our rights and freedoms by taking them off us. In the next few days we can expect new "anti-terror" laws to be announced which will do nothing to stop terrorists but will take rights and freedoms away from the 64m people living here who aren't terrorists. Such legislation does nothing to make us safe but it's an established pattern.

Nobody apart from terrorists and fundamentalists want terrorist attacks in the UK but turning the country into a police state in the name of protecting us from people who want to turn the country into a medieval religious state sort of defeats the object.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again - #StandWithParis

Last night, ISIS terrorists launched coordinated attacks on Paris resulting in the deaths of at least 127 people.

Terrorists set off bombs and gunned down people in at least six locations, including the Stade de France where France and Germany were playing a friendly. The worst attack was at the Bataclan concert hall 200 yards away from the Charlie Hebdo offices where gunmen held concert-goers hostage before throwing explosives into the crowd and detonating them, killing over 80 people.

The terrorists were French, Egyptian and Syrian passport holders and reportedly shouted "This is for Syria" and "Allahu Akhbar".

French soldiers are patrolling the streets of Paris and border controls have been reinstated. ISIS bragged that they had been smuggling terrorists into Europe posing as refugees earlier in the year and one of last night's terrorists was a Syrian who had travelled to France through Greece with refugees.

This morning armed police arrested "a Frenchman" at Gatwick with two guns. He ran off, throwing one of the guns in a dustbin before police detained him. He had a second gun strapped to his body.

Meanwhile, the bodies were still warm in Paris when the British government announced that the first 100 Syrians to be resettled in the UK will be flown direct from Syria to Glasgow next week.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

Germany has only taken 10 immigrants under the mandatory relocation system it instigated

Angela Merkel's mandatory redistribution of illegal immigrants and refugees around the EU has fallen on its face just weeks after the EU Council of Ministers pushed it through under Qualified Majority Voting.

In six weeks, just 116 illegal immigrants and refugees have been relocated from Greece and Italy to elsewhere in the EU with Germany taking ten of them and France taking none.

So far, not even a quarter of the required places to meet targets have been made available across the 25 EU member states that signed up to give the EU the right to flood their country with illegal immigrants in the Treaty of Rome. The UK, Ireland and Denmark have opt-outs from this clause although the EU is trying to circumvent it with proposals to give illegal immigrants and refugees the same freedom of movement rights as citizens of EU countries, meaning they would be allowed to travel to the UK as soon as they've lodged their asylum claim.

France and Germany agree ever closer union in response to Cameron's demand for an end to ever closer union

France and Germany has agreed to further integrate €urozone countries, making a mockery of David Cameron's demands for an end to the doctrine of ever closer union.

Not only have they gone behind his back and agreed to enhance and accelerate ever closer union, they will be announcing the detail of their deal at the same EU summit Cameron will be using to present his list of renegotiation requests.

Hollande closer to Cameron than Miliband

François Hollande has beaten Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential election, marking the start of some interesting times for the euro-fanatics.

Hollande is a committed europhile but he's a socialist whilst Angela Merkel is a conservative.  He wants to renegotiate France's relationship with Germany making it stronger but with a leftist tilt.

Looking at Hollande's manifesto, it all looks quite familiar:

Policy	Con/ Dem	Lab
Withdrawal from Afghanistan	X	X
Shared military	X
Separation of retail and investment banks	X	X
Unachievable "green" energy targets	X	X
Merge income tax and national insurance	X
Introduce punishing higher rate tax		X
Subsidised apprenticeships	X	X
Reducing corporation tax	X
More judges and police	X	X
Massive housebuilding scheme	X	X
Dropping retirement age
Same-sex marriage	X	X
Development funds for deprived areas	X	X
Pie in the sky plan to abolish deficit	X	X
Pandering to native minorities	X	X
More EU integration	X	X

On major policy issues, it seems the socialist Hollande has more in common with the Tories and Lib Dems than he does with his fellow socialists in the Labour Party.  Of course, there's barely a fag paper between the LibLabCon parties when it comes to anything important and the Tories have lurched to the left in recent years so it's hardly surprising.

Rumours abound that Hollande's election could drive a wedge between France and Germany that will bring the EU and the €uro crashing down round van Rumpy-Pumpy's ears but in reality it's unlikely to make all that much difference.  Eight out of ten laws in the UK come from the EU but it's even higher in France as they're in the single currency and Shengen.  Heads of state for EU member states mainly oversee the implementation of EU laws, it doesn't make much difference what colour their rosette is and Hollande is a europhile so don't expect any opposition to greater EU integration.

Croatia to join EU

With the €uro on the brink of collapse, Greece defaulting on its debt repayments, the third largest economy in the €urozone (Italy) seeing its credit rating downgraded and the second largest €urozone economy (France) at risk of losing its AAA rating, the EU has had a eureka moment.

Our masters over the Channel have decided that the best way to stave off the collapse of the single currency and save their beloved EU superstate is to admit Croatia into the EU, complete with the obligatory membership of the €uro.  You couldn't make it up.

Interestingly, for an eastern European country that two decades ago was enslaved within the regressive communist union of Yugoslavia, Croatia is actually in quite a good state financially compared to the rest of the €urozone.  National debt is a mere 58% of GDP which is less than half of that of Greece at 144.9% of GDP or Italy at 118.1% and Croatia ranks higher than several EU countries in the GDP world rankings.  All this will change if the €uro survives long enough for them to join it of course but they can't say they weren't warned.  Not that many people in Croatia would have seen or heard the warnings though, a prize for finding a eurosceptic article in the almost entirely state-controlled Croatian media remains unclaimed.

The game is up for the €uro

Nicolas Sarkozy has called for the EU to be "refounded" around France and Germany, saying "We must confront those who doubt the stability of the euro and speculate on its break-up with total solidarity".

The people openly speculating about the imminent break-up of the €uro now includes the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, who has told UK banks to start stockpiling cash and prepare for the €uro's demise.  He also warned about the amount of debts money the UK's banks have owed to them by companies in €urozone countries which aren't enough to bankrupt them but enough to make a dent in their reserves.

Sarkozy wants to ban countries from defaulting on their debts but stopped short of agreeing with Angela Merkel's suggestion that the EU should approve and regulate national budgets.

Merkel and Sarkozy are talking up the €uro and saying they're going to "guarantee" its future but the game is up and I think they know it.  Reading the words brings to mind images of leaders in the process of being overthrown going on TV to tell people everything is ok while TVs around the world are showing footage of revolutionaries storming their palace.

France - the EU's second largest economy - is at risk of losing its AAA credit rating over concerns that it might not be able to pay its debts.  Italy - the third largest economy in the EU - is on the brink of disaster.  We've seen two government's overthrown by the EU and sockpuppets put in their place.  The end of the €uro is nigh and perhaps the EU too, it's just a matter of timing.  It might last to the end of the year, it might be gone by Christmas - I don't think there is any doubt now that the €uro is beyond salvation.  The EU finance commissioner, Ollie Rehn, said yesterday that they have 10 days to save the €uro and the EU ... well, make that 8 now.

Camoron is heading for France tomorrow to talk to Sarkozy, I hope to god he doesn't do something stupid and drag us into the €uro's collapse.

Hegelian: France says economic union is solution to Greek debt crisis

It didn't take them long, did it?

The FT notes that France is pushing for an "economic government" for the eurozone in the wake of the Greek crisis. "It is too early to talk about this openly", said an official in Paris. "But let's face it, this Greek tragedy is probably the best way to get the debate moving forward. It is a wake-up call."

Ah, yes. Wait until Germany has decided on whether or not to bail out Greece, then let the media loose to hail economic union as the cure-all that we 'need', to avoid economic catastrophe!

Yeah, right. Problem, reaction, solution. Only they're not fooling many people any more.

"We are at a crossroads," Mr Balladur wrote in Le Figaro. "The time has come to move to a new stage."

"The issue of economic government is largely about Franco-German dialogue," said an official. "The president and chancellor talk about it each time they meet."

Get ready for the media onslaught and watch McDoom's reaction.

Cross-posted