Who would want to lead such an angry France?

It was a day of protest in Paris on Saturday and I made it to four of the five demonstrations. I missed Extinction Rebellion’s morning outing to the boulevard Strasbourg Saint-Denis in the centre of the city. Once there hundreds staged a sit-in and blocked traffic with bales of hay for most of the day. Like their Anglo-Saxon brethren in Britain, the protesters in Paris believe the end of the world is nigh and they are aggrieved that neither Marine Le Pen or Emmanuel Macron appear to share their pessimism.

There was little optimism on show at the Place de la Nation in the east of the capital where two rallies were being staged simultaneously. The larger of the two was against the extreme right and brought together several disparate organisations including the left-wing CGT union, SOS Racism and The Human Rights League of France. A few thousand were gathering in one of the boulevards leading off the Place.