Meaning can be found in all sorts of places. For most individuals it is found in the love of the people and places around them: in friends, family an… - Douglas Murray

Guilt, as the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner has diagnosed it in his book La Tyrannie de la pénitence, has become a moral intoxicant in Western Europe. People imbibe it because they like it: they get high on it.

Compare this with the behaviour of Hamas on October 7 . As those of us who have viewed the raw footage from the day have seen and heard for ourselves, these terrorists were not just pleased with what they were doing. They were elated. They spent the whole time screaming "Allahu Akbar" with delight. As they decapitated bodies and shot terrified civilians, they were grinning, congratulating each other and seeking acclaim from others.

For even if you believe — as most people do — that some immigration is a good thing and makes a country a more interesting place, it does not follow that the more immigration the better. Nor does it mean — however many upsides there are — that there are not downsides which should be equally easy to state without accusations of malice. For mass immigration does not continue bringing the same level of benefits to a society the more people who come in.