France is still fighting the tyranny of Islamophobia

It is almost ten years since I and two million Parisians walked through the French capital on a cold Sunday in January 2015. On our minds were the staff of Charlie Hebdo, murdered four days earlier by two Islamic extremists; in our hands were pens, crayons and pencils, brandished to demonstrate our faith in free speech. World leaders attended and the global unity was uplifting; but it turned out to be largely ephemeral, nowhere more than in Britain.

As Allison Pearson of the Daily Telegraph recently discovered, Essex Police no longer uphold the spirit of ‘Je Suis Charlie’, and nor does Private Eye, whose idea of satire these days is to take a soft line on the intimidation of journalists by the police.

But has Britain’s heart ever really been in the fight for free speech in the past decade? Less than a month after the attack, thousands gathered in London to protest against Charlie Hebdo, waving placards on which were scrawled slogans such as ‘Learn some manners’.