When will Britain wake up to the Islamist threat?

A poll this week in France found that 78 per cent of respondents are in favour of proscribing the wearing of Muslim headscarves at universities and also for classroom helpers on school outings.

The poll was conducted after comments by the Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, in a newspaper interview. ‘Helpers [on school trips] don’t have to wear headscarves,’ he said. ‘The headscarf is not just a piece of cloth: it’s a banner for Islamism, and a statement of women’s inferiority in relation to men.’ In the same interview, Retailleau promised to stem immigration into France because it ‘is partly linked to Islamism’.

Retailleau’s remarks underline the huge gulf that separates the governments of France and Britain in regard to their attitude towards political Islam.

This divide is not a new phenomenon. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the French intelligence service nicknamed the British capital as ‘Londonistan’ because successive governments allowed Islamic extremists from around the world to set up home and proselytise with impunity.