If Europe doesn’t get serious about protecting its borders, it’s going to head back to the days of barbed wire and concrete walls. That’s what President François Hollande warned when he went before a rare joint sitting of France’s National Assembly and Senate to argue for an extended three-month state of emergency. His warning came in the wake of the half-dozen simultaneous bomb and machine-gun attacks in Paris on November 13, claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS), that left at least 130 dead.

Hollande’s standing with his countrymen has had something in common with that of Barack Obama. He came to power to replace a right-winger the broad public had come to loathe, in this case Nicolas Sarkozy. And Hollande soon settled into a pattern of permanent unpopularity that has left the man in the street counting the days till he leaves office, and the politically minded migrating steadily towards the opposite ideological pole. Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Front has for long stretches of the Hollande era been the most popular party in the country. Conservative former labor minister Xavier Bertrand called for the establishment of special tribunals for jihadists.