We are under siege from great hordes of immigrants as we wave around our “lavish” benefits. They climb over huge fences erected to protect politicians from protestors. They dangle on spikes of barbed wire, half-gone from exhaustion. No one can stop them. All the systems that are meant to control their numbers are in disarray. 

The French blame us for them. We blame the French for everything. In camps and hostels and detention centres they fester and reproduce. They smell. They speak different languages. They take our women. Their very existence, even in places where they are not living, stops “ordinary people” getting their due: a doctor’s appointment, a council flat, a better life. Those everyday desires can soon flip to fear and loathing.

This flood of anxiety about immigration is about fear. The current hysteria is about fear of Ukip, fear of losing elections and now, predictably enough, there is so much fear that we will let these people drown. They will die trying to get here. That will show them.

This is what Theresa May’s remarks about withdrawing support for the search-and-rescue mission in the Mediterranean amount to. She reckons saving the lives of those drowning was a “pull factor” in illegal immigration. Yeah, that will show them, Theresa. Drowning.

How did we get to such inhumanity? Are these people less than rats leaving a sinking ship? Are we not better than this?  Read more here