Someone has been whispering into the ear of Emmanuel Macron on the subject of immigration, and the President, apparently, has been listening.

You might have supposed that Macron had enough on his plate already, what with the ongoing assaults on Paris by the gilets-jaunes and last week’s terrorist attack on the famous Christmas market in Strasbourg. “Beleaguered” hardly begins to describe the state of his presidency in the last, dismal days of 2018.

But immigration is suddenly back on everybody’s lips in France.