There is a bidding war going on as to who is the most humane, the most compassionate, who can get the most brownie points for making the boldest bid for pro-asylum seeker empathy.
Labour’s Yvette Cooper opened the bidding, no doubt as a cunning ploy in her leadership election run, with a grandiose gesture of 10,000 whilst Andy Burnham claimed he had always been thinking along those lines and she had stolen his glory. Meanwhile the world’s conscience that is Bob Geldorf trumps them both with a personal pledge to adopt 4 Syrian families.
Not to be outdone the Green’s Natalie Bennett displays the usual measured and rational approach so long associated with the Greens and suggests we take in 250,000…or 1 in 8 of the refugees…not sure about her maths as there are over 4 million refugees from Syria alone..never mind those from Afghanistan and Eritrea that she also thinks in need of help.
Finally of course, and where would we be without him, there is the right irreverent Giles Fraser who has said that the Bible is clear: let the refugees in, every last one
Thousands more, says David Cameron now, grudgingly conceding to popular pressure. But why not all of them? Surely that’s the biblical answer to the “how many can we take?” question. Every single last one. Let’s dig up the greenbelt, create new cities, turn our Downton Abbeys into flats and church halls into temporary dormitories, and reclaim all those empty penthouses being used as nothing more than investment vehicles. Yes, it may change the character of this country. Or maybe it won’t require anything like such drastic action – who knows? But let’s do whatever it takes to open the door of welcome.
Another good paycheque gone into his bank account then. Nothing like a bit of controversy to get yourself into the papers or on TV and sex up your career prospects…and Giles is an expert at that…having fled his job in disgust at the capitalist ogres of the Church who wanted outrageously and selfishly to use their churches without them being occupied he has gone on to make a tidy wedge, ironically, from his worthy statements that he churns out relentlessly proclaiming both his humanity and his anti-Establishment credentials at the same time. No wonder the BBC and the Guardian snapped his talents up.