The scandal of the government’s new policy to let the Mediterranean boat people drown (see my earlier blog: http://wp.me/p2Ygy5-b4 ) continued last night on Channel 4 News. The previous policy of supporting rescue operations in the Mediterranean, the government has decided, had only encouraged people to board ramshackle boats to find safety in Europe when, if they knew there would be nobody to rescue them if they got into life-threatening difficulties, they would stay where they were. So rescue had to stop and the boat people had to learn the lesson.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan defended the new policy and looked only momentarily uncomfortable when Jon Snow remarked that letting people drown “seems to be an intolerable decision”.

“Well”, said Hannan, “it’s a finely balanced one.”

So it is, Daniel, so it is.

My friend Robert Marcus was shocked at the whole idea and compared it to “withdrawing support from the fire brigade as its continuing existence encourages people to be careless with matches.”

Exactly.

Not that the boat people themselves are being careless. The Refugee Council’s Maurice Wren said on the same programme:

“People will move, they will find a way to find safety or they will make every attempt to find safety. And the point we make is that when you’re standing on the quayside in Tripoli, about to board a rickety, overcrowded boat, that’s a rational decision for many people, because it’s their best chance of safety.”

On the “finely balanced decision”, Hannan also said that he couldn’t “imagine what it’s like to take that decision, and the burden of responsibility … I’m very glad I’m not the person having to do it.”

Really? Earlier, Snow had asked him whether, if the policy came up in the European Parliament, he would vote for it. Hannen avoided the question. But he clearly would vote for it. Which, in my book, would make him responsible. You can’t avoid it, Daniel, that old “burden of responsibility”.