Another 8 refugees drowned in the Channel last weekend when a dinghy carrying 61 people ran onto rocks off the coast of the French Pas-de-Calais region and was torn to pieces.  This comes less than 2 weeks after 12 people drowned, including 6 children and a pregnant woman, when their boat capsized.

    Like so many others, they were fleeing one of the many regions of Africa and the Middle East (most of them were from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria and Iran) where decades of interference and exploitation by multinationals, backed by US, British and European firepower has produced a near-permanent state of war and deprivation.

   The refugees are mostly ordinary people just like the rest of us, but with one big difference:  to have the chance of a better life they need to leave their birthplaces - and they are courageous enough to risk their lives in the process.

   And let’s be clear they don’t do this because of criminal gangs.  They risk their lives because the rich countries’ politicians closed all legal routes and thus created a lucrative market for people-smugglers.

   It would be easy to “smash the gangs” and stop the boats:  just make migration legal, and provide facilities for refugees to work and develop their skills, which would be in everyone’s interests.  Their new blood is needed on this island with its ageing population - and inbred nationalist idiocy!

   Instead, Starmer visited the far-right Italian PM Meloni this week, to get "tips" on how to "crack down on illegal migration”.  Yes, an Italian regime which pays Libyan warlords to “turn back” migrant boats in the Mediterranean, i.e., to send them to a watery grave.  And it now has a Rwanda-type deal with Albania, which Starmer would like to emulate!

   Of course the real criminality in all this comes from the politicians, like Meloni and Starmer, who choose to whip up anti-foreign, anti-migrant fears in a social context of “things only getting worse”.

   Yes, “divide and rule”, is the tried and tested defence of a political system against the only force which has the capacity to challenge it - a united working class.