A 15-year-old boy was woken up in the morning hours two months ago by British police and placed under arrest. His crime was not plotting a terror attack, committing a violent or sexual crime. Instead, the Reform UK party activist and supporter of Nigel Farage was raided by police for an increasingly common reason for such raids: he had mocked an establishment politician on social media.

The National Pulse brings you the unvarnished truth on issues in the U.S. and across the pond. If you help support Raheem J. Kassam and his team continue this work, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today. We are 100% reader-funded.

The teen, named Fraser, told British media this week that he had been arrested during the summer holidays after helping campaign for Nigel Farage during his by-election (special election) campaign in Clacton. In a post on Facebook, he insulted a local Conservative Party councilor, Simon Bennett from Wolverhampton, calling him a “rent boy,” a British term for a young male prostitute. That was enough to have four police officers show up at his home on August 3 and arrest him.

The case, which is still ongoing, is just the latest example of what has been popularly referred to as two-tier policing and two-tier justice in Britain, where it appears that primarily white, right-leaning members of the public are not only being arrested for speech offenses but are being sentenced more harshly than some migrants are for violent crimes or sex offenses against children.

Britain is Arresting Thousands for Online Speech.

Arrests for online speech offenses in Britain are among the highest in the world, with a Big Brother Watch investigation published this year showing that between 2021 and 2025 alone, 62,199 people were arrested for “communications offenses.” The numbers would average 34 arrests per day, and because the information is only from 38 of 45 police forces, the actual number could be as high as 75,000 arrests.

Britain has a multitude of laws against criminal speech, including the Malicious Communications Act 1988, the Communications Act 2003, and the Online Safety Act 2023. The latter was passed in the name of protecting children online, but has been used repeatedly against right-wing activists and protestors. One passage even makes it illegal to publish “disinformation” online.

Contrast the numbers for Russia, an undeniably authoritarian country. A 2024 report suggests that Russia launched 30,000 cases over social media posts from 2010 to 2024, with just 1,200 considered criminal offenses. That means Russia had fewer than half of the overall cases over a period more than ten years longer than Britain.

Britain has also had police visit people’s homes over “non-crime hate incidents,” defined as speech that may have offended someone but was never considered an actual crime. In March of this year, the leftist Labour Party government scrapped the policing of non-crime hate incidents, calling them “petty squabbles” and acknowledging they were a waste of police time and resources.

Two-Tier Policing and Two-Tier Justice.

The term “two-tier policing” became popularised after the Southport mass stabbing in which Axel Rudakubana, the son of Rwandan asylum seekers, stabbed several young girls to death at a dance class, shocking the British nation. In response, many took to the streets not only to protest the incident itself but also to protest mass migration in general.

Some of the protests turned violent, but some of those prosecuted for disorder merely shouted at officers or were arrested for simply being present at protests. A total of 912 people, including children, were prosecuted in connection with the protests, with the government bringing an additional 500 prison places online just to accommodate them. One of those imprisoned, 61-year-old Pete Lynch, ended his own life after being sentenced for protesting in Rotherham, a notorious hotspot for Pakistani rape gang activity. He had been sentenced to two years and eight months.

Other protesters faced similar sentences, including a man who yelled “Who the f**k is Allah?” who was given a sentence of two years and six months. His crime involved no physical violence.

One of the most high-profile cases involved a woman who was not even physically at any protests. Lucy Connolly was prosecuted for a social media post in which she stated, “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.” After pleading guilty, she was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison.

The National Pulse strives to give you a broader view of the stories that matter. Please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION to support our work today. 

Real Criminals Get Soft Sentences.

When dealing with serious crimes like sexual assault or other acts of violence, the British judicial system is notoriously lenient, especially if the perpetrator is a migrant or comes from a migrant background. In September of last year, Moffat Konofilia, 48, was given a mere 18-month community order and 60 hours of unpaid work for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl. Konofilia, an illegal immigrant, had been living on a barge among around 500 other asylum seekers.

In Epping, an Ethiopian illegal migrant claiming asylum named Hadush Kebatu was arrested for sexually abusing a schoolgirl and a woman. This led to protests outside the hotel that had housed him and other asylum seekers by locals and others, with some violence among the participants. Two of the protestors, Jonathan Glover and Charlie Land, were sentenced to 30 months and 32 months, respectively, in August 2026 for their roles in the disorder.

Kebatu, meanwhile, after being found guilty of two sexual assaults, one involving a 14-year-old, received just 12 months in prison. This means the migrant predator was given a sentence less than half of that imposed on the people who protested his crimes. Added to that, Ketabu was released early by mistake by incompetent officials, who had to launch a manhunt to find him again just a month after his initial imprisonment.

Henry Nowak: The Clearest Case of Two-Tier Policing.

White British teenager Henry Nowak was killed late last year while coming home from an evening with his friends at a local pub in Southampton. The 18-year-old was confronted by a Sikh named Vikrum Digwa, who stabbed Nowak repeatedly with a religious dagger he was allowed to openly carry despite British knife laws, due to exemptions for his faith.

Later released bodycam footage showed that police treated Nowak as the attacker after Digwa and his family lied to them, falsely claiming that Nowak was drunk and had racially abused them. Instead of examining Nowak, who pleaded for help and said he had been stabbed, one officer stated, “I don’t think you have mate,” and roughly handcuffed him, while he bled to death on the ground. The family had not only lied to the police, but Digwa’s mother had even hidden the knife used to kill Nowak before the police arrived.

The incident outraged the British public, who saw police arresting Nowak and letting him die because they believed Digwa’s accusation of racism unquestioningly, and treated Nowak saying he had been stabbed as less serious. Most argued that the reason for the unequal treatment was that Nowak was white. Accusations of two-tier policing for white Britons in the wake of the case were supported by Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage, who released a video addressing the case and calling for an end to two-tier policing.

WARNING: Incredibly distressing footage.

The bodycam footage has finally been released of Henry Nowak’s last moments.

He was the victim, but treated like a criminal.

“I can’t breathe” he says, over and over again.

Instead of helping him the police arrest him on false charges of racism.

Harrowing.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion he was treated differently because he was white.

— Robert Jenrick (@RobertJenrick) June 1, 2026

Britain Has a Priorities Problem.

While the British Parliament claims that two-tier policing does not exist, case after case from the Southport and Epping protests to Henry Nowak’s wrongful arrest as he was dying show that those who are white or regarded as right-wing by the authorities are the subject of aggressive police action and harsh prison sentences, while serious criminals are released early on the grounds that prisons are too crowded.

To help Raheem J. Kassam and his team keep providing you with top-tier analysis and reports, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today.

Image by James Mitchell.

Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.

The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam explained to Andrew Kolvet on The Charlie Kirk Show this week that the riots now gripping France are being driven predominantly by people from migrant backgrounds, and that the governments which brought them into Europe are not merely feckless bystanders but active participants in a modern slave trade.

If you value the work of Raheem J. Kassam and his team, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today. We are 100% reader-funded.

“These… riots that have now been taking place for about a week, predominantly with what [the French authorities] call ‘migrant-background individuals,’” Kassam said. The phrase, he argued, is “just a sort of euphemistic way to say migrants, maybe illegal migrants. Almost always in such cases, [it is] people who have entered into the country unlawfully, even though they may currently have legal status thanks to French government policies.”

The protests began as school blockades over conditions in French high schools and have since escalated into arson attacks, clashes with police, and hundreds of injuries on both sides. French officials have pointed to far-left involvement, including from French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise party, while images from cities including Paris, Lyon, and the European Union power center of Strasbourg have shown barricades, fires, and running confrontations.

President Donald J. Trump has described the scenes as a consequence of “nothing less than out of control mass migration.”

KASSAM: EUROPE IS FACING A ‘MODERN-DAY SLAVE TRADE’@RaheemKassam argues criminal trafficking networks are exploiting migrants—and accuses European governments of enabling the system.

“These are criminal gangs. They are mass human trafficking organizations.@AndrewKolvet pic.twitter.com/3OkbtVsTPK

— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) October 5, 2026

Modern-Day Slave Trade.

“These are people who, remember, did not come to Europe, did not get there of their own volition, but were brought to Europe by the likes of [former German Chancellor] Angela Merkel in 2015, when she said, ‘Everybody, come one, come all. We can do this. You’re all doctors and nurses and engineers and scientists and nuclear physicists from Angola, and we’d love to have you,’” Kassam stressed.

He extended the same charge to the aid groups that help ferry people across the Mediterranean and the English Channel, which are now facing sharper scrutiny in Britain amid protests on the south coast. “Fundamentally, what do we have here? We have a modern-day slave trade,” Kassam said. “These people are coming over and effectively entering into indentured servitude to the people who they paid to bring them over. These are criminal gangs. They are mass human-trafficking organizations.”

He named the complicit politicians directly: “Andy Burnham in the United Kingdom and Emmanuel Macron are actually traffickers themselves.”

The warning Kassam attached to the French scenes was that the same populations and these trafficking networks do not stop at the Channel. “I’m afraid those people will get to England as well, and that is why the big sort of protests are kicking off here on our south coast, because they’re looking at places like Paris, because they’re looking at northern France, because they’re looking at other parts of the continent,” he explained.

Kassam argues that the riots are less a spontaneous education dispute than the predictable result of a policy that imported large numbers of people through criminal intermediaries, regularized them after the fact, and then treated the resulting disorder as inexplicable. The governments that opened the route, he argues, are culpable for the trafficking.

The National Pulse cannot bring you the unfiltered truth about the political situation in Europe and America without support. If you value this work, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today.

Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.

Brazil’s political establishment succeeded in keeping former President Jair Bolsonaro, a major ally of President Donald J. Trump, off the ballot in 2026. It did not succeed in killing Bolsonarismo, the right-wing populist movement he inspired. In Sunday’s first round of Brazil’s presidential election, Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, finished ahead of incumbent left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, setting up a decisive runoff on October 25.

The National Pulse shows you the big picture on international politics. If you value this work, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today.

According to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, Flávio received 56.1 million votes, or 47.03 percent, compared with 53.9 million, or 45.16 percent, for Lula. Despite years of prosecutions, court orders, political bans, and the imprisonment of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s populist right may be closer than ever to returning to power.

They Removed Bolsonaro, But Not Bolsonarismo.

Jair Bolsonaro’s fall from power following his razor-thin defeat to Lula in 2022 was followed by a series of legal battles. Brazil’s electoral authorities barred the former president from running for office until 2030, and prosecutors subsequently accused him of participating in a plot to overturn the result of the 2022 election. In September 2025, Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted Bolsonaro and sentenced him to more than 27 years in prison.

Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing, while his allies have portrayed the cases against him as a politically motivated attempt to remove the most powerful figure on the Brazilian right. President Donald J. Trump’s administration explicitly accused Brazilian authorities of “persecuting former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro” in a July 2025 executive order. The White House described the criminal charges against Bolsonaro as unjustified and warned that the prosecution threatened Brazil’s ability to hold a free and fair presidential election in 2026.

The irony now confronting Lula and Bolsonaro’s opponents is difficult to miss: they succeeded in preventing Jair Bolsonaro from running, only to find themselves facing another Bolsonaro who received more votes than Lula in the first round.

Trump Went to Bat for Bolsonaro.

The similarities between Jair Bolsonaro and President Trump have been apparent since Bolsonaro entered Brazil’s presidential palace in 2019. Both built populist movements around nationalism, opposition to the political establishment, tougher policies on crime and immigration, hostility toward socialism, conservative social values, and an often combative relationship with the mainstream media.

But the relationship became considerably more important after Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

The Trump administration repeatedly attacked the treatment of Bolsonaro and focused particular attention on Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who became one of the central figures in the investigations of Bolsonaro and his supporters. The administration accused Moraes of abusing his authority, censoring political speech, targeting political opponents, and placing unacceptable demands on American technology companies.

Trump eventually transformed those objections into American foreign policy. In July 2025, the White House announced an additional 40 percent tariff on Brazilian goods, bringing tariffs on affected products to 50 percent. The administration specifically cited what it described as the “politically motivated persecution, intimidation, harassment, censorship, and prosecution” of Bolsonaro and his supporters.

The National Pulse produces in-depth analysis to keep you informed. If you value this work, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today.

Bolsonaro Becomes a Dynasty.

The 2026 election has also demonstrated that Bolsonarismo is no longer dependent entirely upon its founder. Flávio’s presidential campaign has been accompanied by remarkable electoral success for the rest of the Bolsonaro family. Former First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro won a Senate seat representing the Federal District, while Jair’s son Carlos Bolsonaro won a Senate seat in Santa Catarina. Jair Renan Bolsonaro was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, as was Renato Bolsonaro, Jair’s brother. The family emerged from Sunday’s elections with four new members of Congress while Flávio advanced to the presidential runoff.

The results for Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party were even more consequential. The party increased its representation from 15 to 28 senators, the strongest Senate result for a single party since Brazil returned to democracy in 1985, and was projected to win 121 seats in the lower house.

Latin America Is Moving Right.

Flávio Bolsonaro’s success is also part of a much broader political transformation underway across Latin America. The early 2020s were dominated by leftist political victories. Lula returned to power in Brazil, Gabriel Boric won in Chile, Gustavo Petro captured Colombia, and left-wing governments appeared ascendant throughout much of Central and South America. That political map has changed dramatically.

Argentina elected libertarian Javier Milei in 2023. Ecuador reelected center-right President Daniel Noboa in 2025. Bolivia subsequently shifted right after two decades dominated by the Movement for Socialism, while conservative José Antonio Kast won Chile’s presidency. Honduras and Costa Rica also moved right, followed by major conservative victories in Peru and Colombia during 2026.

With more than 200 million people and Latin America’s largest economy, a Flávio Bolsonaro victory in Brazil would place the region’s dominant country alongside an increasingly powerful bloc of governments hostile to the socialist and progressive movements that dominated regional politics only a few years ago.

The USAID Factor.

The Trump administration moved rapidly in 2025 to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), terminating thousands of foreign aid awards and transferring the remnants of American foreign assistance to tighter State Department control. The move dramatically reduced the vast network of grants that had previously financed nongovernmental organizations, civil society groups, media initiatives, and other programs throughout Latin America.

Since Trump’s overhaul of USAID and American foreign policy, Latin American voters have delivered a remarkable succession of defeats to left-wing candidates and governments.

The shift has removed a major component of the U.S.-funded NGO and civil-society ecosystem that conservatives had long accused of disproportionately empowering progressive organizations abroad. At the same time, Trump has openly cultivated friendly governments in the Western Hemisphere and made rolling back socialism in the Americas a central feature of his regional strategy.

The Bolsonaros Bounce Back.

Flávio Bolsonaro enters the October 25 runoff in a position few predicted. He not only finished first, but did so while his father remained imprisoned and prohibited from running himself.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian right has dramatically strengthened its position in Congress. Even another Lula victory could therefore leave the veteran leftist confronting a legislature far more sympathetic to Bolsonaro, including lawmakers who may attempt to secure an amnesty for the former president.

The Brazilian political and judicial establishment spent years attempting to contain Jair Bolsonaro, ultimately barring him from office and putting him behind bars. Yet the movement he created survived, his family expanded its political power, and more than 56 million Brazilians just cast presidential ballots for his son.

If Flávio Bolsonaro defeats Lula on October 25, the attempt to remove the Bolsonaro name from the presidential palace will have produced an extraordinary outcome: another Bolsonaro in power, a vastly strengthened Bolsonaro political dynasty, and the biggest Latin American country joining the region’s growing revolt against the left.

If you want to help Raheem J. Kassam and his team to research and publish original stories, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today.

Image by Geraldo Magela/Agência Senado.

Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.

The National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam believes the murder of veteran British stateswoman Ann Widdecombe, immigration and justice spokeswoman for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, could have been avoided if an attempted firebombing of Farage’s house, which is now being treated as an attempted terrorist attack, had been taken seriously. The initial mishandling of the firebombing attempt, which reportedly involved Miss Widdecombe’s alleged murderer, raises serious questions about whether British authorities are failing to recognize potentially deadly threats from the political left.

The National Pulse strives to provide you with original news and analysis every week. If you want to support Raheem J. Kassam and his team, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today. We are 100% reader-funded.

“What we’re talking about here… is the summer assassination of a former Member of Parliament, a former member of the European Parliament, a beloved national figure, Ann Widdecombe, who was brutally bludgeoned to death in her home,” Kassam told Stephen K. Bannon this week on his War Room show.

Widdecombe, 78, a former Conservative Party government minister who later joined Reform, was found dead at her Devon home in July. Prosecutors have charged 28-year-old Joshua Kerry with her murder. She was allegedly struck in the head 21 times with a hammer.

Police initially claimed there was no indication of a political motive, but Counter Terrorism Policing subsequently described the killing as a “targeted attack,” with investigators reportedly discovering far-left and communist material during searches connected with the suspect. Authorities also reopened an investigation into an April 2025 incident at a property linked to Farage that police had originally treated as an attempted burglary. The handling of that investigation was referred to Britain’s Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) after authorities acknowledged that a potentially relevant line of inquiry had not initially been pursued.

“If the police had taken Nigel Farage’s firebombing of his home seriously, then Ann Widdecombe may be alive today,” Kassam said. The Crown Prosecution Service announced on October 2 that Kerry had been charged with preparing acts of terrorism “including against Nigel Farage MP,” relating to alleged activity between May 2024 and July 2026.

For Kassam, the cases point to a wider institutional problem in Britain: two-tier policing and two-tier justice. “This is anarcho-tyranny that you see here in the United Kingdom,” Kassam said. “It’s the police not just refusing to do their jobs to protect people on the political right, but actively going out of their way, it seems, to defend left-wing political terrorism.”

WATCH:

RAHEEM KASSAM: If UK Police Had Taken The Firebombing Of Nigel Farage’s Home Seriously, Ann Widdecombe Might Be Alive Today.

@RaheemKassam https://t.co/TFM6EmB0MC

— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) October 5, 2026

To help Raheem J. Kassam and his team keep delivering you the best news and analysis, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today.

Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.

President Emmanuel Macron, once the wunderkind of globalism, has become one of France’s most deeply unpopular leaders. Nevertheless, he continues to advance globalist projects like an expanding European Union, recently telling British Prime Minister Andy Burnham “welcome back” after he expressed his openness to reversing Brexit. Macron even claimed Brexit was “the biggest lie of the last 30 years.”

The National Pulse takes time to profile some of the most important politicians in the world. If you value exclusive investigations and analysis from Raheem J. Kassam and his team, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today. We are 100% reader-funded.

Ironically, Macron is presenting European integration for Britain at a time when not only is the European project failing, but his own country is descending into chaos. French polling shows he is historically unpopular, with just 16 percent of the French favorable to him. So how did the face of globalism become one of the most hated leaders in the world?

Making of Macron: The Insider Presented as an Outsider.

Following his graduation in 2004 from France’s elite École Nationale d’Administration, Macron took a job in France’s vast civil service at the Inspectorate General of Finance, where he spent four years before joining the investment banking industry, where he worked for the powerful Rothschild & Cie Banque in 2008. Within the span of just two years, he became a managing partner of the firm and, between 2008 and 2012, helped carry out important deals worth billions of euros with global corporations like Nestlé.

Macron left banking in 2012, transitioning into politics by serving in the deeply unpopular socialist President Francois Hollande’s government as deputy secretary-general and then as economy minister from 2014 to 2016. Hollande was the most unpopular French president of the Fifth Republic, leaving office with a four percent approval rating.

Despite his ties to the unpopular Hollande regime, Macron distanced himself by creating a new movement ahead of the 2017 presidential elections, called En Marche! (“On the Move”) and presenting himself as somewhat of a political outsider. He made it clear that he believes in globalism, European integration, and technocratic government. He decisively defeated populist then-Front National presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, 66.06 percent to 33.94 percent, after the establishment rallied around him following the collapse of old parties like the Socialists and the notionally conservative Les Républicains.

If you value exclusive investigations and analysis from Raheem J. Kassam and his team, please JOIN THE NATIONAL PULSE or MAKE A DONATION today. 

First Term: Jupiter Comes Back to Earth.

Upon taking power, Macron began presenting himself as a semi-monarchical president, going as far as to call himself “Jupiter” after the king of the Roman gods, and declaring that his mind was so complex that journalists could not understand it. The “Jupiterian” style of governing was meant to reflect a strong presidency and a president unafraid to use the broad executive power of the French presidential office, while limiting his interactions with the press and other political figures to remain “above” them.

Coupled with a majority in the legislature, Macron set out to make reforms to France’s labor regulations, abolish the wealth tax on financial assets, and cut housing benefits. He also championed greater “European integration,” meaning the surrender of more national sovereignty to European Union agencies.

The wind appeared to be at Macron’s back in the early days of his presidency, with a lack of any serious, organized political opposition. However, this lasted only a little over a year, when November of 2018 changed everything.

A tax on fuel was the catalyst for one of the longest-lived protests in modern French history. The Gilets Jaunes, or “Yellow Vests,” were a spontaneous movement of regular people across the political spectrum who were fed up with cost-of-living increases in the country. The fuel tax especially hurt those living in rural areas and small French towns, as they relied on fuel to work and travel.

Gilet Jaunes marching for the 25th consecutive week. A movement of workers fighting for greater democracy, economic justice and national sovereignty. Totally ignored by the ‘internationalist’ British Left. (They’re just a bit *too* working-class, you see.) pic.twitter.com/6LrneaSlu1

— Paul Embery (@PaulEmbery) May 4, 2019

Every Saturday from November 17 to June 28, 2020, Yellow Vest protesters took to the streets of Paris and other major cities and towns across France. At the height of the protests in 2018, Macron even considered fleeing Paris via helicopter amid rumors that protesters could storm the Elysee Palace.

Ultimately, Macron backed off on the fuel tax increase, announced a series of economic concessions, and then the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to outdoor gatherings, ending the protests. Many thought at the time that Macron’s popularity had hit its lowest point, but eight years later, his popularity is even lower than it was at the height of the Gilets Jaunes movement.

On the international stage, Macron called for Europe to exercise greater autonomy, especially from the United States, and he has been a major proponent of a single European army. During his first term, he also repeatedly engaged with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the issue of Ukraine, but he was wholly unable to prevent or resolve the war in 2022. In the end, Macron’s desire to make France a major diplomatic power was hampered by France’s inability to actually determine anything among the major powers.

Second Term: Survival, Failed Gambles, and Decline.

France’s 2022 presidential election came as the country was just emerging from some of the strictest COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions in Europe. It played out largely as a repeat of 2017, with Macron facing and defeating Marine Le Pen, but this time by a smaller margin of 58.55 percent to 41.45 percent.

The French parliament, which usually sees the president’s party win a majority, was another story altogether. Macron’s movement, now renamed Renaissance, fell 44 seats short of a majority due to the rise of the National Rally, as Le Pen’s Front National was now called, and Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale (NUPES), a broad leftist coalition. Macron’s ability to govern the country alone had ended.

The largest and most ambitious reform of Macron’s second term was his attempt to raise the French retirement age from 62 to 64. When Macron finally pushed the reform through without a parliamentary majority vote in 2023, thanks to an enabling power in the French constitution, France erupted into strikes, riots, and enormous protests that lasted more than four months. As with the Gilets Jaunes, Macron eventually halted the reform, pausing the increase in the retirement age until at least 2027, after the next presidential election. It was yet another major defeat, this time of the only major reform of Macron’s second term.

Macron has found it difficult to introduce any other reforms or even govern the country effectively due to a 2024 gamble that spelled the end for his political project. In the spring of that year, the European Parliament elections saw Marine Le Pen and the National Rally easily win the most seats in France, with 31.37 percent of the vote, more than double Macron’s bloc, which won 14.60 percent and came in second place.

In response, Macron gambled everything by calling a snap French parliamentary election, which was held in late June and July of that year. Once again, however, Macron’s bloc could not secure a majority in the parliament. In fact, they did not even come first.  The election was won by the leftist NUPES bloc, which also failed to win a majority. Le Pen, National Rally, and their allies also increased their seat count in the parliament from 89 seats to 142.

While trying to gain stability domestically, Macron had unleashed even more instability, and this was reflected in the tenure of his Prime Ministers, of which there have been four in the last two years. Prime Minister Michel Barnier and his government, for example, lasted barely three months before a no-confidence vote, pushed by Marine Le Pen, relieved him of his duties.

Macron’s second-term foreign policy has fared no better, with France effectively kicked out of the Sahel region in Africa, as coups and upheaval in countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have led to Russia-aligned governments that no longer wish to have a French military presence.

Unable to prevent the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Macron has been ineffective in his attempts to end the conflict, though he has constantly presented himself as Europe’s principal interlocutor on the issue. Macron has become increasingly hostile to Russia, sometimes suggesting he may send French troops to Ukraine, though this has yet to happen. His relationship with President Donald J. Trump also soured following Trump’s second term election victory, and he has accused the Trump administration of being “openly anti-European.”

A Legacy of Failure, and an Unstable Future.

France in 2026 is fundamentally an unstable country. The parliament continues to be unstable, with its fifth prime minister in two years, and the streets are filled with youths, many of them migrants or their children, burning down schools across the country, while far-left politicians like Jean-Luc Mélenchon appear to be attempting to fan the flames.

Migration also remains a major problem in France, with asylum seeker applications only dipping below 100,000 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Since 2023, the number of asylum applications has consistently been above 140,000 per year. A number of high-profile migration-background crimes have also occurred in France under Macron’s rule, including the murder of 12-year-old Lola Daviet in 2022, who was raped, tortured, and killed by an Algerian illegal alien.

Macron’s political legacy is one of failure on nearly every front, especially in his second term. New polls suggest that next year’s presidential election is unlikely to feature anyone linked to Macron in the second round, with Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon the favorites to face off. Instead of bringing France together, Macron has left it more divided and more unstable than it was prior to his presidency, and closer than ever to real civil conflict.

As Macron prepares to leave the Elysee Palace next year, the question many are asking is not whether he could have done better, but whether he could have done any worse. A looming potential war with Russia before then may very well answer that question.

Join The National Pulse or donate today to support more exclusive analysis from Raheem J. Kassam and his team. Every membership and contribution helps fund the research, reporting, and data work behind stories like this.

Image via World Economic Forum.

Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.