I have often wondered whether politicians are unique among human beings with their apparent ability to see only what they want to see. Or is it that they simply ignore those inconvenient truths obvious to the rest of us?

This week, it took a Frenchman (a woman actually – the Mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchard) to tell our government what many of us have been saying for the last 30 years or so. Madame Bouchard is evidently driven to distraction by the problem of thousands of African and Middle Eastern illegal immigrants camping on the streets of her city while they wait to cross the Channel to the UK. She said that these immigrants see the United Kingdom as a “soft touch” and that our generous benefits system “acts as a magnet” to them.

These unfortunate people are clearly desperate to try to get into the UK by whatever means they can and the British government (to quote the Mayor once again)is doing nothing to dissuade them of their belief that Britain is “El Dorado”.

Our government needs to get a firm grip of this problem and, after it has strengthened our border security, needs to make clear to the European Union that it is not solely a British problem. In fairness, it is not solely a French problem either but instead is a problem to be dealt with by the EU. Unfortunately we all know what that means and that really is a problem.