It’s time to break the stranglehold on the migrant crisis debate

John Major and Nicolas Sarkozy are grandees of their respective centre-right parties. But the days when the Conservatives and the Republicans dominated the political landscape of Britain and France are long gone. The fortunes of both parties have dwindled as the migrant crisis has deepened. Neither the Tories nor the Republicans confronted the phenomenon with the courage that their electorate demanded. They paid the price at the ballot box.

But while one grandee has woken up to this fact, the other remains in denial.

Major’s recent interview with the BBC underlined his misreading of the crisis confronting Europe. The former Tory PM, who governed the country between 1992 and 1997, spoke sympathetically of the vast numbers of migrants crossing dangerous waters to reach the continent, and he scolded a society that ‘has come to regard immigration as an ill.’

Sarkozy has a different take on the crisis. ‘Immigration is a problem,’ he explained in an interview this week, returning to a theme he had first broached 12 months ago.