Several years later, in 2009, the people of Switzerland put down what they regarded as a worthwhile marker in a similar vein. The constitutional amendment that passed a ban on minaret construction in the country was put to a plebiscite by the Swiss government and approved by 57.5 per cent to 42.5 per cent. The following year Chirac’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, had an opportunity to make full-face coverings into an issue. A bill was passed in 2010 that made it illegal to wear a full-face covering in public places such as streets and shopping centres. Finally, in the summer of 2016 a number of French towns banned the wearing of the so-called ‘burkini’ on their beaches. Although the country’s highest administrative court suspended the ban, the issue of the burkini dominated the news of August 2016. One of the town halls to ban the garment (which exposes the face though not the body) was Nice. In its way this was a distillation of the French solution to the questions thrown up by mass immigration.

A month before the burkini ban in Nice, a Tunisian called Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a truck into the crowds on the seafront as people celebrated Bastille Day. Eighty-six people were killed that evening on the Promenade des Anglais, and many more were wounded. Isis subsequently claimed that the terrorist had carried out the attack in a response to their call to carry out such attacks anywhere in Europe. The French government once again extended the state of emergency that had been in place in the country since the previous November, but it was typical that in the weeks after such an atrocity the loudest public debate was about an item of Islamic swimwear that had only been invented a decade earlier. It was tempting to get hooked on such comparative minutiae because all the bigger questions had become unanswerable. You may be able to stop people getting hold of Kalashnikovs but how do you stop them getting hold of trucks? And you may stop more extremists coming into your country, but what do you do with extremists who are already citizens?

12. Learning to live with it

12

Learning to live with it