‘The people have shown the way’

THE UN agency for refugees estimates that since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, two million people have been displaced.

In reality, the number is probably much higher. The tide of refugees pouring over the border into Poland and other neighbouring countries is so great that it is impossible to keep an accurate count.

The response of the UK government to a refugee crisis of a size unseen in Europe since the end of the Second World War has been slow, bureaucratic, and inadequate.

To ask people fleeing a war zone with little more than the clothes they stand up in to apply for visas online and to produce a sheaf of documents to do so is plainly ridiculous.

It is also wrong that they are only granting visas to refugees who have family members already living in the UK. This is equivalent to asking people struggling in the water after a ship has sunk to prove they or a family member bought a ticket before you let them aboard the lifeboat.

Since the crisis in Ukraine began, the British people have opened their hearts to people living in a country far away who they have never met. Individuals and communities, including our own, have collected money and donated food and other items to help those in need.

In a time of darkness and fear, this is a welcome reminder that there is a light of shared humanity that burns so brightly the darkness shall never overcome it.

The contrast between the generosity and openness of ordinary working people, and the narrow thinking of those who proport to lead us couldn’t be starker or more shaming.

Not for the first time, it is we the people who have shown the way. The time has come for Boris Johnson and his government to raise their game, catch up, and do the right thing.

Adam Colclough