By Rab Bruce’s Spider

Some readers might recall Norman Tebbitt, a member of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, telling unemployed Britons to get on their bikes and look for work. In other words, the very essence of the market-driven Tory philosophy is that people should be economic migrants.

Yet what happens when millions of migrants turn up wanting into Europe? The word, "migrant" becomes a term of abuse. Maybe it’s because they are walking instead of riding bicycles that they are viewed as not properly following the Tory creed of migrating to find work. Heaven forfend that the sole reason they are denigrated so much is that they are foreigners.

But wait a moment. Are these people economic migrants? Well, a few of them might be but they will be a tiny minority because the vast bulk of these people are refugees from a war zone and the most appallingly stupid comment from today’s Tory Cabinet Ministers is that these people will remain at home if they are sent back. Seriously? You expect people to live in a war zone? A war in which, it must not be forgotten, the UK is playing an enthusiastic part by dropping bombs, using drones and supplying weapons and munitions to Saudi Arabia.

The fact that the Tory Press and the BBC in particular refer to these people as migrants is a repeated attempt to portray them as evil foreigners intent on taking British jobs and claiming British benefits. This perception could not be further from the truth but the BBC continues to call them migrants in an ongoing attempt to demonise them.

David Cameron, of course, has not been slow to use this human tragedy for political ends by making the absurd claim that the reason the UK has not been inundated with migrants is that the UK is not part of the Shengen free movement territory and so is able to protect its borders. It must have escaped Call Me Dave’s notice that Britain is an island and therefore more difficult to reach.

Having said that, one wonders how long it will be before some enterprising French fishermen begin transporting refugees across the channel. If they did, the Tories should applaud such enterprising initiative but they probably wouldn’t do that because, well, the French are foreigners.

The most concerning thing here is the attitude of nearly all the European countries. Only a small fraction of the Syrian refugees are heading for Europe. Most go to Lebanon, where around 25% of the population is made up of refugees. Yes, that’s 25%! Yet Europe’s response is to build fences and hire more security guards to keep refugees out while the politicians hold emergency summits to discuss what should be done about what they insist on calling a Migrant Crisis. The one thing you can be sure of is that not a single one of them will come up with the suggestion that we should maybe stop bombing their country and supplying arms to the rebel forces. OK, President assad is not a nice person but surely this crisis has reached the stage where peace is more important than the political leanings of the local dictator.

The whole sorry mess is typical of Western European attitudes to the Middle East. We created the mess but when people try to escape from the horror we caused, we wash our hands of it and do our best to keep them out.

There is no easy solution to this disaster but one can’t help thinking that our politicians seem hell bent on making the whole thing worse.