Gauge humanity by the way we treat refugees

By the time you read this, there will be a new set of the same old wonky, squabbling overlords in place.

Forgive my Russell Brand levels of disillusion. My head is full of a different set of overlords — the ones who just gave the go-ahead for the bulldozing of a shantytown that exists on top of an abandoned rubbish dump a few miles outside the centre of France’s least lovely town. 87 miles from my front door.

When the Calais prefecture told refugees they could settle undisturbed on this rubbish tip, that’s exactly what happened. The people who came were mostly from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Eritrea. They were homesick and traumatised, and hoping to reach the UK where many have families. You know the story. The port of Calais became a dystopian fortress of razor wire and riot police, and so the Jungle — as its inhabitants named the scrubby patch of ground on which they pitched their tents — became a bottleneck of tear gas and desperation.