Sky Views: Vive la difference! But would the UK react differently to its own Notre-Dame-type disaster?

Adam Boulton, editor-at-large

The dreadful fire at Notre-Dame this week unified the world in dismay.

The conflagration led the news here and elsewhere for several days.

Sympathy for the damage done to the iconic and historic cathedral in Paris quickly turned to applause for the way President Emmanuel Macron rallied the French nation and pledged to rebuild Notre-Dame "even better" within five years.

France is our nearest neighbour and we are yoked by geography to go through time side by side - sometimes as allies, sometimes as enemies - friends and foes but forever different. Vive la difference!

Pondering what would have happened here had London suffered a Notre-Dame-type disaster points up Franco-British differences and similarities in our attitudes to wealth, religion, and the state.

What would be our equivalent to Notre-Dame, a building which somehow seems to incorporate the pride, history and love of a nation?

Like the Acropolis in Athens, or perhaps the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

A structure which would have British billionaires delving deep into their coffers to help repair?

Sir Christopher Wren got to build St Paul's Cathedral thanks to the Great Fire of London.

Winston Churchill considered it so important to national morale that he put in place special teams to protect it during the Blitz.

Charles and Di got married there.

Still I don't think it occupies a place in national consciousness akin to Notre-Dame.

If it did we would never have allowed the continuing modern encroachments on the skyline around it. St Paul's has not been treated with respect.

St Paul's is not a UNESCO world heritage site. Westminster is - comprising the Palace of Westminster and the nearby Abbey.

The Abbey is a magnificent gothic cathedral built slightly later to outdo Notre-Dame and it too is the place for the coronation of kings and queens. But I don't think it is a common icon in the national psyche.

Like it or not, Big Ben - or more properly the Elizabeth Tower of the Palace of Westminster - is our national symbol stamped across tea caddies, biscuit tins and the title sequences of news bulletins.

If parliament caught fire it would attract the attention of the world. Oddly enough the present building owes its existence to the fire in 1834 which destroyed the old building but not the medieval Great Hall attached to it.

In her prize-winning book The Day Parliament Burned Down, and contrary to popular belief, the former Commons archivist Caroline Shelton claims "the whole crowd did not stand about clapping and cheering as the Houses of Parliament perished".

Although she does report "one man was taken up for huzzahing".

The mood on the banks of the stinking River Thames then was clearly very different from the tearful crowds standing in silence and prayer by the Seine this week.

Then there's the money. President Macron was on the spot within hours announcing a fund for private donations - France's richest men and women responded immediately: €100m from Francois Pinault, €200m from Bernard Arnault of Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, €200m from the Bettencourt family, owners of L'Oreal.

Theresa May's reputation will never recover from her poor response to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, in which 72 people died.

She took several days to visit and had no words of comfort or inspiration for the nation. The Queen did rather better during her private visit.

Like it or not Big Ben - or more properly the Elizabeth Tower of the Palace of Westminster - is our national symbol stamped across tea caddies, biscuit tins and the title sequences of news bulletins

The British response was to blame the authorities and to ask what the government was going to do about the disaster.

A disaster fund was set up for donations but in nearly two years has raised only a small fraction of what the French donated in a day.

One explanation is that the UK does not have a class of indigenous billionaires like the French.

French houses dominate the world's luxury brands, they are the biggest and richest in the world and have been getting richer at a phenomenal rate, thanks to new demand from the Chinese.

The net worth of Pinault and Arnault increased by $22.4bn in 2018 alone and that's before the vexed question is disputed of whether they stand to get tax deductions of 60% or more for their donations.

Britain's billionaires are not as rich and many of them are relatively recent arrivals in this country.

Forbes Magazine reckons Bernard Arnault is worth over $90bn.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe of Ineos tops the Sunday Times Rich List 2018 with £21.5bn.

He recently took over the Team Sky cycling operation.

The others in the UK top 10, all with a lower net worth, are: the Hinduja brothers, Sir Len Blavatnik, The Reubens, Lakshimi Mittal, the Rausings, Alisher Usmanov, the Westons, The Duke of Westminster, the Bertarellis, and James Dyson.

Would any of them have dipped into their pockets as deeply as the French?

The most generous British philanthropists, led by David Sainsbury, have tended to give away a much greater proportion of their wealth from a relatively lower base, normally for carefully chosen causes.

Originally from Canada, the Weston family are renowned for their generosity and those seeking funds have often had to turn to those originally from abroad such as Sir Len Blavatnik and the branches of the Rausing clan, a 21st century match for the low-key generosity to British causes of the Getty and Rockefeller families.

It is no accident that Westminster Abbey's appeal website is carefully tailored for American donors.

The UK does not have an equivalent tradition of homegrown private philanthropy by plutocrats.

In both France and Britain the State is reluctant to pick up the bill. Because of the French tradition of secularism, or laïcité, the state owns Notre-Dame and lets the catholic church use it for free.

In rougher revolutionary times the cathedral was run down and used for animals and storage.

More recently there have been complaints that the cathedral was not being given enough by the taxpayer to stop it deteriorating.

A Friends of Notre-Dame Group was set up and was struggling to raise much money until the fire.

It is a similar story with Parliament. After years of indecision MPs have in principle agreed to a "full decant" from the Palace of Westminster for a £6bn refurbishment.

But neither they nor the government have yet found the guts to risk the wrath of the taxpayers and vote for it in practice.

Anyway, at best it wouldn't start at the earliest for six years, even though the de facto deputy prime minister David Liddington has said there is the likelihood of a catastrophe in the building within five years.

Meanwhile, Big Ben and much of the roof of Parliament are shrouded in scaffolding and tarpaulin much as Notre-Dame was before the fire.

When it comes to caring for their iconic historic buildings, perhaps the French and British aren't so different.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Paste BN editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Ian King - Do-it-yourself or do-it-for-me? Why the DIY sector is suffering