Gavin Mortimer

The paths of two French mothers, Madame Ibn Ziaten and Madame Merah, converged in a Paris court this week, at the start of the trial of one of their sons, Abdelkader Merah. In March 2012, another of Madame Merah's sons, Mohammed, shot dead seven people in southern France in the first of the Islamist attacks that are now a routine feature of European life. Even in France, which has suffered more than most countries from this wave of terror, Merah's rampage continues to haunt people. It wasn't just that he singled out three Jewish children for cold-blooded execution in their school playground but that he also filmed his murders before he was killed in a police shootout. The first to die was Imad Ibn Ziaten, selected for execution because he was a Muslim in the French army.

In January this year, Germany's vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel gave an uncharacteristically candid interview for a European politician. 'Salafist mosques must be banned, communities dissolved, and the preachers should be expelled as soon as possible', he told Der Spiegel. 'If we are serious about the fight against Islamism and terrorism, then it must also be a cultural fight.' Gabriel made his declaration two weeks after a lorry had been driven through a Christmas market in Berlin, killing twelve people. The perpetrator, Anis Amri, was revealed to have links to a radical Salafist preacher in the town of Hildesheim.

The latest attack in France couldn't have come at a worse time for the government. On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and his ministers dined at the Élysée Palace as the guests of their president, a "moment of conviviality" before they all head off on holidays today. It's been a trying few weeks for them, what with Emmanuel Macron's plummeting popularity amid a series of PR disasters for his inexperienced En Marche! party and a spot of R&R is just what everyone needs. Instead, this morning brought news of yet another outrage in the French capital. Fortunately, casualties were light. Of the six soldiers struck by a BMW outside their barracks in the western suburb of Levallois-Perret, two are reportedly in a serious condition.

Having recently hosted Bono and Rihanna and taken centre stage during Donald Trump's visit to France, Brigitte Macron now has a new role to keep herself busy. The French President's wife was named last week as the godmother of the first baby panda born in a French zoo. Macron said she was 'very happy' to be asked. But, increasingly, France is not feeling her joy and there is growing resentment at her presence in the Élysée Palace. An online petition launched two weeks ago by the artist Thierry Paul Valette opposing the creation of a formal role for Brigitte Macron as First Lady has been signed by nearly 200,000 people.

What a forty eight hours it has been for Emmanuel Macron. On Monday, he gave his regal address to the National Assembly at the Palace of Versailles, a grandiose occasion during which the French president rivalled Tony Blair and Barack Obama for swaggering self-confidence. As Jonathan Miller said in the Spectator, it's hard not to be 'cowed by the absolute bravado of the young president'. Then, on Tuesday, Macron's prime minister, Édouard Philippe, presented to the Assembly his government's programme for the next five years. As is the tradition, the MPs were asked at the end of the general policy speech to give the PM their backing.

Was that a touch of gloating I detected last night as I watched the news on French television? The lead item was Donald Trump's acceptance of President Macron's invitation to attend the Bastille Day commemoration in Paris next month. It's always a prestigious occasion and this year marks the centenary of America's entry into WW1. Hence the invitation to the American president which came in a telephone conversation where the pair also agreed on a joint military response against the Syrian regime should Bashar al-Assad launch another chemical attack.

Islamic State will be delighted by what happened outside Finsbury Park mosque in the early hours of Monday morning. In the space of three months they've achieved in Britain what they failed to pull off in France during five years, and provoked a retaliatory act. This is what they want. When the Syrian intellectual, Abu Moussab al-Souri, published his 1600-page manifesto in 2005, 'The Global Islamic Resistance Call', his stated goal was to plunge Europe into a war of religion.

It's in the little gestures one learns much about a man, and such is the case with Emmanuel Macron. Since his anointment as president of France last month, the 39-year-old has held talks with Angela Merkel, Recep Erdogan, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Those tête-à-têtes have made the headlines but it's what happened in Paris at the end of last month that demonstrated the steeliness of the youngest French president since Napoleon. As is customary for the head of state, Macron attended the final of the French Cup at the national stadium in Paris. There once was a time when the president of France was introduced to the two teams on the pitch before kick-off, but Nicolas Sarkozy dispensed with that tradition when he came to power a decade ago.

If there's one country that knows how Britain feels in the wake of last week's suicide bombing in Manchester, it's France. Similar horror has been visited on the French several times in the past five years with nearly 250 slaughtered at the hands of Islamic extremists, so the French are all too familiar with the grief, the rage and the shock still being felt across the Channel. But not Britain's incomprehension. At first, maybe, when Mohammed Merah shot dead three Jewish schoolchildren in a Toulouse playground five years ago, but since the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were slaughtered in January 2015 the French have understood what is going on.