David Cameron clearly can’t break the habit of a lifetime: he’s going to play the race card again. He seems to have set in motion a nice little scare story. An agreement made some years ago between the UK and France allows UK border control officials to police the borders between France and the UK on the French side in order to stop asylum seekers from ever arriving on British soil. This is a local version of the wider system of Airport Liaison Officers (ALOs) who since the 1990s have been sent to a number of what are called “refugee-producing countries” – that is, persecuting countries – in order to help them stop their terrified citizens from fleeing their borders and applying for asylum here.

Now Cameron is suggesting that if the EU referendum results in the UK leaving the EU France may renege on that agreement, resulting in uncontrolled migration to our shores and migrant camps on the beach at Dover instead of Calais. So the message is vote to stay in the EU and we’ll keep the barbarians out.

Well, I haven’t decided how I’m going to vote. But however I vote it won’t be based on some imagined need to keep refugees out. This refugee crisis, perhaps more than any other, is of our own making. “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war”, said Churchill (of all people!). But the US chose war in Afghanistan as revenge for the Twin Towers and to get rid of the Taliban and al-Quaida. It failed and, with our help, left the country in a mess with the Taliban still alive and kicking today; we chose war in Iraq to get rid of weapons of mass destruction which we knew it didn’t have, left it hopelessly divided and paved the way for the rise of ISIS. We intervened in Libya to save it from Gaddafi and, yes, you’ve guessed it, left it in a mess – arguably, as in the case of Iraq, in a worse mess than it was in under the regime we were so eager to get rid of. Now we’ve agreed to join the airstrikes in Syria, and there’s talk of further military action in Libya (its “peace talks”, like those on Syria, having broken down). All of these interventions have produced innocent victims and, despite claims of “smart bombs” (not again, please), there will be more innocent victims. All these interventions have produced refugees and will continue to do so.

So I’m for the UK taking responsibility for the refugees it has helped to create, in line with its obligations under the Refugee Convention which it has signed. I’m for peace talks, diplomacy, all sorts of jaw-jaw. Whether we are in the EU or out, I’m against Airport  Liaison Officers or anybody else preventing people fleeing unmentionable horrors from finding shelter here. And if the EU states are incapable of finding ways to share responsibility for refugees among themselves, perhaps the club is not worth belonging to after all.

I don’t like ending on what feels like a negative note, but it’s all I can manage tonight. Here’s the Cameron story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35519210