There are occasional moments which speak volumes about an individual. Sometimes, a single word gives an insight into the soul.
So it was this week when David Cameron described migrants trying to reach Britain as the “swarm”.
It was the moment when many people, even those worried and concerned about the extent of immigration, thought “Wait a minute. These are human beings, not insects”.
The asylum crisis is not an easy problem. However, neither is it a new one. Theresa May, the “tough as teak” Home Secretary, has had many months to come to terms with the French authorities to find a proper process and an effective solution. She has totally failed to do so.
Now Cameron’s answer is to have “extra sniffer dogs”. If that is the best his emergency Cabinet committee, Cobra, can come up with then it is time he wound it up.
The matter has come to a head not because the migrants are “swarming” but because a combination of industrial action and protests by French farmers has effectively closed the ports and the tunnel to through traffic.
The issue then becomes a matter of economic survival for many small companies up and down the country, as well as a security and human crisis in Calais.
So what is to be done? Well firstly, no open economy can rely on one major artery for its lifeblood of trade. The Chunnel has been blocked over the last week by strikes and migrants. Let’s say it had instead been a terrorist attack or a major fire?
Last year I intervened as First Minister to save the Rosyth ferry route to Zeebrugge. I did so exactly because we need to have alternative trade routes to the continent.
These routes have to be supported consistently and the supply lines further developed so they can be just as efficient as the Channel ports. If you don’t, you can be sure you will pay a heavy price when things go wrong. And if things can go wrong then, at some point, they most assuredly will.
Secondly, we have to work properly with other Europeans to plan a way forward on the migrant crisis.
Most countries have taken far more asylum seekers than Britain the French twice as many, the Germans many, many more, the Swedes and the Danes far more per head of population.
Italy and Greece are dealing with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing across the Mediterranean, not a few thousand gathered at Calais.
Above all we have to understand the roots of the crisis. People are fleeing their countries in terror because society has broken down. In some of these countries we have a direct responsibility. In Libya, Britain spent 13 times as much bombing the country as trying to reconstruct it.
The bulk of the people grouped at Calais are not thugs or criminals but people desperately trying to stay alive or just trying to get on. The attraction of Britain is not benefits but language. They are, by a vast majority, English speaking. They would love to work, not loaf.
Zimarco Jones is a Nigerian and former hotel worker who a few weeks ago founded a school for asylum speakers just outside Calais. In cramped conditions, his school is teaching faltering French to fluent English speakers who have fled Darfur in the Sudan, where they “rape girls and kill boys”.
They have despaired of making it across the Channel and hope for a better life in France. They are trying desperately to improve their circumstances in the crowded encampment.
He says: “We now have a discotheque, a house, a mosque, a school, shops. We are not animals.” No, they are not.
They are not animals nor insects just people.
Lawrie’s stroke of genius deserves plenty of praiseIt is not often in sport or indeed politics that someone has a true stroke of genius. However, Scotland’s own Paul Lawrie has done exactly that with his Saltire Energy match play event at Murcar links over the last week.As First Minister I had a good deal to do with keeping the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart in Inverness and then bringing it to Royal Aberdeen last year and Gullane this year.Watching the American golf on Saturday I heard one commentator almost casually remark that the Scottish Open was now one of the “must-play” events of the golfing world.However, that is nothing like as adventurous as the vision of Paul Lawrie, who first saw the opportunity for a full European Tour match play event and then lined up the support of key sponsors and VisitScotland.As a successful Ryder Cup player, Lawrie was well placed to understand that it was a real weakness of the European Tour in not having a full match play contest where top professionals can test their skills in the purest form of the game.However, Paul’s real genius was in choosing the Murcar links just north of Aberdeen. Very few people would have had the vision to see that this little gem of a links course could be the perfect venue for a match play contest.A spellbinding week of golf has been the result and Murcar has done Scotland proud.Abolish ‘bloated’ LordsThose whom the gods seek to destroy they first render ridiculous. That is the stage which has been reached by the House of Lords.Prime Minister Cameron is poised to further flood this bloated institution with yet more peers. There are already a staggering 800 lords, barons, ladies and baronesses with a few bishops thrown in.Cameron’s plan, only delayed by Lord Sewel’s spectacular departure, is to appoint another 50 Tories at public expense.The House of Lords should be abolished forthwith and replaced by an institution reflective of the people.