How can we stop so many desperate people risking their lives in the English Channel? Gerald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, has offered us his advice. The British, he says, must “take responsibility” – by making our country “less attractive” to migrants.

It is of course very thoughtful of Monsieur Darmanin to give us the benefit of his wisdom. All the same, I hope he will elaborate on his proposal. Because to me, at any rate, it doesn’t seem entirely clear what he means.

Presumably he doesn’t mean we should give asylum seekers less money. After all, we already give them less than other major countries in Western Europe. We give asylum seekers £39.63 a week – which is significantly less than they could get in Germany (£65.63 a week). In fact, it’s less than they could get in Monsieur Darmanin’s own country (£42.84 a week).

So when Monsieur Darmanin tells us to make Britain less attractive, he can’t be telling us to cut asylum seekers’ benefits. Nor can he be telling us to restrict their opportunities to find work. In the UK, asylum seekers aren’t allowed to find work while their application is being processed – no matter how many months that process takes to complete. Whereas in Germany they can start work just three months after submitting their application, and in France it’s six months.

Whatever Monsieur Darmanin has in mind, however, I’m not convinced that it will succeed. Most of the people attempting to cross the Channel have travelled from the most hellish parts of the Middle East. So it wouldn’t be easy for us to make Britain “less attractive” than, say, Syria or Afghanistan. And if we did somehow manage to achieve this unusual goal, it would cause an even bigger migrant crisis than the current one. Because 67 million British people would be rushing en masse to escape to France.

Thankfully, there is an alternative solution. Instead of making the UK more unattractive, we need to persuade prospective arrivals that it already is unattractive. This should be easy enough. Simply recruit a crowd of die-hard Corbynistas – and pay them to march up and down the French coast every day with loudhailers, telling everyone in sight how awful Britain is. How racist its voters, how cruel its Government, how miserable its future, and so on.

After all, this is the sort of thing they already say free of charge on Twitter. So surely they’d love to be paid for it. Meanwhile, we get them out of the country for a bit. Everyone wins.

SAD, SAD, SAD

I hope all is well with Sir Mick Jagger. Over the weekend the great man was photographed sporting a huge pair of deeply eccentric-looking spectacles. He has not, however, started taking fashion tips from Sir Elton John. Apparently, what Sir Mick was wearing were special “light-therapy” glasses. These emit a cheering glow, designed to lift the wearer’s spirits during the dark winter months. They’re particularly popular with people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD.

Does Sir Mick have SAD? I certainly hope not. Because SAD doesn’t just cause a general feeling of gloom. It also weakens the sex drive. Which, for admirers of Sir Mick, would be a concerning development.

Sir Mick may be 78. But he has a son who is four – born when Sir Mick was 73. This suggests a libido that is nothing short of extraordinary. Bear in mind that he first became a father over 50 years ago. Yet he’s still going strong. Indeed, he’s had so many children over such a long period of time, he has a great-granddaughter who is two years older than his latest son. 

Think about that fact for a moment. It’s awe-inspiring. The man is superhuman.

It would be a great shame, therefore, if he were to lose interest in having more children. This country’s birth rate is already alarmingly low. Without the heroic efforts of Sir Mick, we’ll never get it back up.

Shock twists

Aberdeen University has added “trigger warnings” to classic works of literature, to ensure that students aren’t shocked by their contents. They certainly sound very helpful. Prospective readers of Julius Caesar, for example, are warned that the plot “centres on a murder”, while those about to study A Tale of Two Cities – set during the French Revolution – are warned that it “contains scenes of violence, execution and death”.

Most helpfully of all, the trigger warning on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped informs readers that the novel contains “depictions of kidnapping”. It might be argued that, in this particular case, the title already acts as a trigger warning, but these days you can’t be too careful.

I wonder whether they’ll add a trigger warning to War and Peace. On the one hand, it contains depictions of war. But on the other, it also contains depictions of peace, so perhaps those balance it out.