Now it has emerged that the Toulouse serial killer — who murdered first three French Muslim soldiers of Maghrebin origin and then a rabbi and three Jewish children — is not a white right-wing neo-Nazi supporter of Marine Le Pen or even President Sarkozy but a jihadist claiming affiliation with al-Qaeda, there are some on the French Left who ought to feel distinctly embarrassed. They had assumed, and publicly stated, that the current debate on immigration in France lay behind the killings, had somehow, in the mind of the killer, given him permission to kill three Muslims and four Jews. François Bayrou, a centrist candidate, and François Hollande, the socialist presidential candidate, ought surely, in particular, to be ashamed of themselves: both went as near as they could to implying that President Sarkozy was personally responsible for these terrible deaths. This is how the New York Times correspondent reported M Bayrou, with barely concealed approval of his analysis: the debate in France, he preposterously opined, is similar to that in Norway after Anders Behring Breivik killed dozens of young campers in cold blood in July: was his killing spree encouraged in some way, asked the NYT reporter, by too harsh a debate in Norway about immigrants and foreigners?