Gavin Mortimer

Another day, another Islamist murder in France — this time, a 49-year-old policewoman fatally stabbed in the neck by a Tunisian man screaming 'Allahu Akbar.' She was murdered in her own station, in Rambouillet, 25 miles south of Magnanville, where in 2016 an Islamist stabbed a husband and wife police couple to death in front of their three-year-old child. In the intervening years there have been numerous police officers killed by men of a similar ideology, to the point now where the brutal slaying of a female officer slips down the news pecking order after just one day. Such is the acceptance in France of Islamist terrorism. C'est la vie. What’s striking, now, is the lack of outrage. The murder did not even lead the French television news.

Many years ago I married into a family of the French working-class. They came from Aveyron, La France Profonde, and most were dyed-in-the-wool socialists. But at a barbecue in the summer of 2002 one, Fabien, admitted that he had cast his ballot for Jean-Marie Le Pen in the recent election. A quarrel ensued but the young man stood his ground. His car had been broken into three times in a matter of months and the police in Marseille had shown no interest. Voting for Le Pen was Fabien's protest at the police indifference to petty crime. Twenty years later and it is no longer unusual to discover young people who vote for Le Pen’s daughter, Marine.

Britain's favourite Frenchman, Michel Barnier, is in the Calais region today where he will address a conference about his part in Brexit and perhaps give a further indication as to his presidential aspirations. The EU's chief Brexit negotiator was described in yesterday's Le Figaro as the man who can 'unite the right' and in doing so present a credible alternative to Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in 2022. Barnier presides over a political initiative called Patriotes et européens and he explained its concept to Le Figaro: 'Patriot and European, this means that I believe in the force of the nations, the respect of national identities and France as a country of influence at the head of the European nations.

There may be a touch of the Monday blues for Emmanuel Macron this morning as he scans the headlines in France. A new poll reveals that vaccine scepticism in his country has reached record levels, thanks to his recent belittling of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Sixty-one per cent of those canvassed expressed their doubts about the vaccine, up 18 per cent from last month. Only 23 per cent said they had confidence in the AstraZeneca jab. In contrast, 75 per cent of British people have faith in the vaccine. But if the French are increasingly reluctant to be vaccinated, they are determined to enjoy the arrival of spring – Covid restrictions or not. In Marseille yesterday around 6,500 people danced and partied at a street carnival, many of them wearing fancy dress.

There was a rally in Paris on Sunday at which a couple of hundred protestors vented their anger at the French government's 'anti-separatist bill' which was passed by the National Assembly on Tuesday. It was a disparate but predictable gathering of what one broadcaster described as ‘anti-racism, left-wing, pro-Palestinian and other activist groups’. The demonstrators were repeating the claims made by some left-wing politicians that the bill will stigmatise the country's Muslims. On the contrary, retort the government, who define the bill as a 'Respect for Republican values'. They say it will protect the majority of Muslims from the minority of extremists whose objective is to create a separate society in France in which Islamist values take precedence.

These are dispiriting times for France. The 6pm curfew and the closure of bistros and theatres have taken all the fun out of life. What is there to do in the evening but watch television? Last night viewers were subjected to a live political debate, what was regarded as the opening salvo to the 2022 presidential campaign. The long-suffering French have 15 more months of this. The debate pitted Gérald Darmanin, the Interior Minister, against Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National (RN). In the estimation of this morning's Le Monde it was a ‘cordial’ encounter dominated by Islamism.

Last month, a 15-year-old boy called Yuriy was beaten senseless by a gang of youths in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. The attack made national headlines for three reasons: it was caught on camera; the victim was white; the 15th arrondissement is not usually the setting for such violence. The political, celebrity and media elite expressed their outrage as footage of the attack went viral. The French footballer Antoine Griezmann, for example, tweeted his support for the teenager, as did Gérald Darmanin, the Interior Minister, and the city mayor Anne Hidalgo. It has subsequently been alleged that there was more to the attack than first relayed by the media.

Emmanuel Macron has become the pantomime villain for much of the British press after his hissy fit last week in which he questioned the efficacy of the AstraZeneca jab. It was the latest in a series of snipes at the British that has made the French president the scourge of Fleet Street. 'Bargain-basement Bonaparte,' was how the Daily Mail described Macron, while the Sun plumped for 'pint-sized egomaniac'. He's none too popular among his own people, either, the figurehead of the French failure to be the only member of the UN Security Council incapable of producing their own vaccine. No wonder a recent opinion poll suggested Marine Le Pen is a stronger threat than ever ahead of next year's presidential election. But the president of France should be lauded for one triumph.

There is a council meeting in the southern French town of Ollioules tomorrow but one item has been removed from the agenda. The mayor, Robert Beneventi, will not now propose renaming the area's Eucalyptus College after Samuel Paty. You'll recall the fate of Monsieur Paty, beheaded just beyond the gates of his Parisian suburb school last October by a young Islamist enraged that the teacher had shown a caricature of the Prophet during a lesson discussing freedom of expression. Paty’s brutal death sparked revulsion around the world – save in Pakistan and Turkey – and in France there was a large rally in Paris. There were numerous placards proclaiming 'Je Suis Samuel' and similar sentiments were widely expressed on social media.

It says much about the endemic moral cowardice of Europe that Emmanuel Macron is being hailed as the saviour of the continent. For what? For having the audacity to utter a single word: 'Islamism'. In identifying the ideology behind the wave of brutal terrorism that has swept Europe this century, Macron has also shown more honesty than his predecessors in the Élysée. He is to be commended, too, for taking the Financial Times to task in their shameful attempt this week to traduce him and his nation. Now he has an ally in Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz after Monday evening's attack in Vienna that left four dead.

Let us imagine for a moment that Emmanuel Macron takes the advice of many in the Anglophone world and bans the publication in France of any further caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, might praise the president of France for his courageous decision 'to act with respect for others' and the New York Times might no longer insinuate France was institutionally Islamophobic. The angry protests in Pakistan and Bangladesh would end, and president Erdogan of Turkey would tell the world that Macron was no longer mentally ill, but rather a man of integrity. French school teachers would go to work without fear and perhaps, too, the staff of Charlie Hebdo. But Macron's 'war' on radical Islam would not be over.

On Thursday morning, I visited the cathedral at Reims. The central door on the north side is dedicated to Saint Nicasius, who founded the first cathedral on the site and who, in 407 AD, was decapitated by the Vandals. It struck me as odd that a burly security guard was checking visitors' bags, but shortly after leaving the cathedral I learned of what had unfolded at the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice. Barbarity is nothing new to France but what is so troubling about the wave of bloody violence that has swept the country in the last decade is the impotence of the rulers. Emmanuel Macron flew to Nice and made an all-too familiar presidential declaration about France 'not giving in to terror'.

The mother of my daughter didn't attend yesterday's rally in Paris to honour the memory of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded in a street in the north-west of the French capital last Friday. A teacher herself in a state school in Seine-Saint-Denis in the north of Paris, a district often cited as the most deprived in France, she was profoundly shocked by the death of Monsieur Paty. Naturally, she has nothing but sympathy for his family but she had no wish to stand shoulder to shoulder with politicians, intellectuals, the judiciary and members of an education authority who for years have offered her profession little or no support in their struggle against Islamic extremism.

Emmanuel Macron's bold declaration last Friday that the Republic will eradicate Islamic extremism appeared to draw a swift response in Lyon. On Saturday evening 12 masked men carried out a well-coordinated attack against a church in the suburb of Rillieux-la-Pape in what the Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin described as a ‘shock against the Republic’. Attacks against churches and other symbols of Christianity are widespread in France; in 2017 there were 1,038 such acts recorded, a figure that rose to 1,063 the following year. Not all the attacks are carried out by Islamists. Some are vandalised by the bored or unhinged, and many are the work of the far-left.

The first thing I heard when I switched on the French radio this morning was a Green activist berating the world for its lack of urgency in tackling climate change. That's why, he explained, Youth for Climate France is organising a series of demonstrations this weekend, including one on Saturday in which Extinction Rebellion will be present. Another protest took place in France today, this one in Marseille where hundreds of angry residents vented their anger at the government's announcement on Wednesday that as of tomorrow the city's bars and restaurants must close for two weeks.