Migrant crisis shows the EU at its worst

Nobody could fail to be moved by yesterday’s harrowing images of lifeless migrant children washed up on the Mediterranean shore. the message they hammer home is that this crisis is reaching horrifying proportions. but what do we get from europe’s leaders? to listen to Angela Merkel and the european Commission trying to blackmail the UK into accepting more syrian asylum-seekers, one might think they were secretly working for ukip. leave aside that Germany has no business lecturing jam-packed britain on our moral duty to refugees, with our far more consistent record of offering sanctuary to the world’s desperate.

Forget, too, the commission’s monstrous threat to slash funding for projects in the UK – which makes a £12billion net contribution to brussels – if we refuse to accept a quota.

like the car-crash of the single currency, this crisis has brought out the worst in the eu – that supposed brotherhood of nations, now clawing at each other’s throats, incapable of making a decision.

on only one point do our 27 partners agree. As they fight to put national interests first, all think that someone should take responsibility. Anyone but themselves.

thus, France tries to stop migrants entering from Italy – while hurrying those who arrive towards the UK. Meanwhile, Austria demands action from Hungary, slovakia rejects any idea of quotas and Greece, as ever, just can’t cope.

With tens of thousands more migrants flooding in, every day offers more proof that the eu as it’s now constituted just doesn’t work.

Indeed, the only glimmer of hope is that our partners are coming to realise this. the appetite for change is growing. And if britain is to remain in the eu, the time for radical reform is now.