I was getting the immigration story of a friend the other day, as I often do. How did a brown guy end up in the UK? I've been even more keen on it since my parents died, having left me in a part of the world where I'm clearly foreign. To be fair I did move around a bit myself, but Western Europe is not that big. In our family we have horrendous stories. People who fell in the water, terrible fights breaking out in the camps. People feeling so desperate they sent their kids to foreign countries under false pretences.

As we were talking, it struck me that there's no right to free migration. There's all sorts of other things in the human rights convention, but going where you want somehow isn't one of them. This is despite the economic orthodoxy being that mobility, particularly of capital, is good.

I do get it. It's not actually a plus for absolutely everyone in the receiving country. Perhaps they compete for jobs or housing. There's legitimate concerns about people bringing values that aren't compatible with existing ones. Or they might commit crimes.

But there's also a lot of evidence that future generations assimilate. You'll meet plenty of darker skinned people in Europe who pretty much think the same as anyone else. They take a job, they pay their taxes, they root for the national team.