Our changing world - Facing the new reality on migration

There are few recent policy statements as chilling or as objectionable as last month’s declaration from the British Foreign Office that the UK will no longer support search-and-rescue operations to prevent impoverished African migrants drowning in the Mediterranean.

The we-wash-our-hands declaration was made because it has been suggested that those basic, humanitarian operations encourage more people to attempt the dangerous, often fatal, sea crossing. Apart at all from the callousness involved, the hypocrisy, from a country more or less built on immigration and colonialism, is astounding.

That so many of those trying to build a new life in Europe need to do so because of the legacy, among many other tragedies, of British imperialism just adds to the sinister cynicism of the announcement. That it was made by a Conservative government trying to protect its right flank from the even more shameless UKIP does not justify the contemporary to-hell-or-Connacht condemnation either.