Racists don't let facts get in way of an effective falsehood

NEXT month marks five years since three-year-old Syrian Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach in Bodrum and sparked an outpouring of outrage and sympathy for refugees.

It didn’t take long for the compassion fatigue to kick in and once again refugees crossing the channel are pawns in a propaganda war waged by right-wing agitators such as Nigel Farage.

His “reportage” videos from the channel are depressing, not only because they are racist bile but because his boat always comes back in the end.

The videos get hundreds of thousands of hits and despite being part-mockumentary, partDad’s Army, they are dangerously effective in perpetuating the invasion myth.

The wartime rhetoric has been ramped up by the Home Secretary Priti Patel’s appointment of a “clandestine Channel threat commander”, or C-word for short.

Patel, the daughter of Ugandan refugee parents, is keen to show she has her big girl pants on, now she has learned what counterterrorism means.

More than 4000 people have successfully crossed the English Channel so far this year but it’s not that more refugees are coming to Britain rather that they have changed their route.