For the time being it seems that things will continue as they are. Even now the onus still remains on Europeans to solve the world’s problems by bringing in people from many parts of the world. Only we, when we say ‘enough’, are castigated and then troubled by such castigation: a response that many other nations and despotisms remain happy to encourage. No Western European country has played a major role in destabilizing the regime in Syria or prolonging the ensuing civil war. But those countries that have done so – for instance Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – pay no humanitarian price. Iran – whose Hezbollah among other militias have been fighting for Iranian interests in Syria since 2011 – has even berated Europe for not doing more to help the refugees. In September 2015 Iran’s President Rouhani had the gall to lecture the Hungarian ambassador to Iran over Hungary’s alleged ‘shortcomings’ in the refugee crisis. Likewise Saudi Arabia, which has spent the period since the beginning of the Syrian civil war backing its preferred sides inside the country. Not only has Saudi Arabia not made one Syrian into a Saudi citizen, it has also refused to allow the use of 100,000 air-conditioned tents that are erected for only five days a year by pilgrims on the Hajj. At the height of the 2015 crisis the single offer the Saudis did make was to build 200 new mosques in Germany for the benefit of the country’s new arrivals.

Other than European goodwill continuing to be taken advantage of, one further thing can be predicted with some certainty: public sentiment among Europeans will continue to sour. Although recent history shows that politicians certainly can go on ignoring majority public opinion for decades, it is not inevitable that such a situation will continue indefinitely. A typical poll carried out in 2014 found that a mere 11 per cent of the British public wanted the population of their country to increase.5 Yet in the two years that followed the population grew enormously. Since 2010 the number of those in the United Kingdom who were born outside it has grown by 1.4 million. During the same period 940,000 children were born in Britain to foreign-born mothers. And this is in a country that has avoided the worst consequences of the 2015 crisis.