Macron’s France is fearful and angry

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’. He offered the same passive platitudes a fortnight ago, hours after a schoolteacher had been beheaded in a quiet suburban street for showing a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed in the classroom.