Europe cannot allow an ungoverned space to exist on its doorstep

Last month, 700 migrants attempting to sneak into Europe drowned when their rickety vessel capsized in the Mediterranean. This week, the European Union announced a naval initiative to crack down on migrant smugglers. It won’t work.

These tragedies are going to recur endlessly, as long as a steady fleet of unsafe boats are able to set sail from Libya. The country has become a political vacuum which no longer deserves to be identified as a sovereign state. The civil war has left no functional state; in many parts, nobody is keeping the electricity running or schools open, let alone policing the coastline to stop illegal migration or the flow of jihadists. Halting human trafficking to Europe is not in the interest of warring elites, particularly as it’s so lucrative.

Britain’s new Conservative government must confront this crisis immediately. More than 140,000 illegal migrants reached European shores in 2014 alone. The numbers for 2015 could easily be double that. Of course, many never reach the shores: nearly 2,000 migrants have already died this year; and this toll will continue to rise.

The majority of these migrants are from war-torn