Gavin Mortimer

On Saturday, I visited Chartres and stood in awe inside its cathedral. I was as stunned by its splendour as I was by the knowledge that men once wanted to blow the cathedral sky high. The Revolutionary Committee was only prevented from carrying out its wish in 1793 by a local architect who warned that removing all the rubble would be a complicated task. So instead they stripped the cathedral of its metal and burned the peat wood sculpture of the black Madonna. The cultural sacrilege of the late-eighteenth century has returned to France in the shape of the Yellow Vest mob, many of whom share the Revolutionaries' hatred of their country and its traditions. The real Yellow Vests, the ones who last winter staged peaceful protests throughout France, have deserted the movement this year.

Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron have more in common than just a desire to 'get Brexit done'. The pair also recognise the threat posed to the West by Islamic extremism  - and the Prime Minister can learn from the growing determination of the French president to stand strong against the hardliners and in defence of mainstream Islam. Last weekend in Paris an estimated 13,500 people gathered for a 'Stop Islamophobia' march, among them Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing France Insoumise party, Esther Benbassa of the Green Party and Philippe Martinez, head of the CGT union.

It will be a sight for sore eyes on Sunday when leaders of the two main parties lay their wreaths at the cenotaph. Prime Minister Boris Johnson leads a government that last month failed to include legislation in the Queen's Speech to protect military veterans from prosecution; Jeremy Corbyn's close and long associations with the IRA are well-documented. Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has been out and about this week with his poppy, no doubt hoping the nation has forgotten what he said in 2003 at an event to mark the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. 'It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle,' he told his audience.

The left no longer exists as a coherent political force in France. Embarrassed in the 2017 presidential election, the Socialist party has continued to disintegrate, polling just 6.2 per cent of the vote in May's European elections. That was marginally fewer votes than Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise, which mustered a distinctly modest 6.3 per cent. The far-left leader polled well in the first round of the presidential election but as one French commentator wrote this week, his mistake was then to 'to revert to his original culture, that of the radical left'. As for the Socialist party, since 2007 their membership has plummeted from 260,000 to 102,000. But that is what happens when middle-class politicians alienate their traditional working-class voters.

Should Boris Johnson become Prime Minister it would be a calamity for his country and for Europe. That's the view of Le Monde, a newspaper that declares it's time for France and the rest of the continent to stop 'regarding him as a buffoon'. In an editorial headlined ‘Boris Johnson at the head of the UK? No thanks!’, the left-wing paper said that Britain's answer to Donald Trump is a danger to European stability, although clearly not as much as the Brexit Party. Since the party's formation earlier this year, Le Monde routinely describes them as ‘extreme-right’, which must come as something of a shock to Claire Fox and millions of other British lefties and their old-fashioned belief in democracy.

There were two significant interviews on French television on Sunday evening. One featured Laurent Wauquiez, the erstwhile leader of the centre-right Républicains, who fell on his sword after the disastrous performance of his party in the European elections. Minutes before Wauquiez announced his resignation, Marion Maréchal gave her first major television interview since stepping down as a National Front MP in June 2017.

Two years ago, Marine Le Pen was a laughing stock, not just in France but around the world. She was never likely to beat Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election but her barrack room performance in the live televised debate with her rival shredded her reputation. While Macron embarked on his campaign to conquer the world that summer, Le Pen disappeared from public life, reportedly plunged into a fit of depression by her humiliating defeat. Although she emerged again in the autumn of 2017 it was without her two most trusted lieutenants, Florian Philippot and Marion Maréchal.

Unless you were a commuter struggling to reach work last week in London, the antics of Extinction Rebellion were comedy gold. If the world really is in imminent danger, as the activists tell us, then at least we'll go down laughing. I'm not sure what gave me most entertainment. The giant yoga session, maybe, or the activists dancing across Waterloo bridge, although it looked less like dancing and more like a troupe of crusties trying to ward off a swarm of wasps. Then there was the side-splitting interview on Sky News with Robin Boardman-Pattison, the 21-year-old Extinction spokesman (and jet-setting skier), who threw a hissy fit when Adam Boulton suggested he and his pals were "incompetent, middle-class, self-indulgent people".