LET us be clear about the migrant crisis. Whatever we offer to refugees, migrants or adventurers who turn up uninvited we must be prepared to give to everyone in the world who wants the same.

This is as true today as when the Archbishop of Canterbury advised Ethelred the Unready to pay danegeld.

The wilfully feeble-minded can ignore it and carry on simply trying to be nice to people, but they cannot refute it or escape its consequences.

If what we are offering appears to be the prospect of the new arrivals, or indeed their children, infiltrating the western economy then that is sufficient attraction for hundreds of millions of people to emulate their journey.

This will not end until the living standards of Europe have been levelled down to those of the poorest places on Earth so that no one else wants to come. By that time the indigenous population of Europe would be only a fraction of the new total.

John Riseley, Harrogate