The year started with stories of boats packed with migrants sinking in the Mediterranean and sporadic surges across borders at places few had heard of (Ceuta, Mellila, Lampedusa etc). Later problems at Calais made bigger ripples in Britain.
By September 500,000 people had entered Europe and newspapers were reporting that 80 percent were not Syrian refugees fleeing war but economic migrants from across the Ummah - an Islamic notion of brotherhood that Douglas Murray noted had failed to provide succour.
Meanwhile social media users cashed in as many gestures of encouragement to the migrants as they could in exchange for social capital - despite an avalanche of facts suggesting such posturing was dangerous. With German authorities admitting migrants were lying about their origins, stories circulating of Iraqi soldiers and Isis militiamen ditching their guns for Europe, and organised - crime stats (as well as less organised crime such as rape and
antisemitism) rocketing, still, moral signalling and economic autism prevailed.
For a while now Europe's policymakers have appeared either arrogant enough to believe their nation's cultural strength bears no relationship to arithmetic or, more honestly, that the displacement of the continent's current peoples is necessary for the civilisation to atone for its history - an odd interpretation of the past that contains the paradoxically
eurocentric view that the West's behaviour has been uniquely immoral.
"Apres nous le deluge" Marquise de Pompadour is meant to have said. But Europe's top brass trump her when it comes to cynicism - "allez - y le deluge" might be an accurate motto as they seek to gain political points for altruism and yet suffer none of the consequences of their policies -which amounts to allowing 1.4 million third world people in this year and triggering other would - be migrants to follow suit.
Writing off the concerns of those who treasure hard - won security and slowly - built values as the plebeian, bigoted relics of a society past its expiry date, whilst simultaneously buying their way into homogenous, leafy areas with globalised assets and bolt - holes - truly, our 'leaders' have their cake and eat it.
The EU's bete noire, Orban (Hungary's PM), is more honest: certain that liberalism's tab will be paid by our generation if we don't change our ways, he reckons "the most dangerous combination in history is to be both rich and weak". Historically - conscious commentators, too, have compared the nation sized waves of migrants to the volkswanderung that toppled Rome and the 'Sea Peoples' that broke the mighty empires of the Levant.
Even before 2015 Europe's largest cities were undergoing a slow but vivid balkanisation - with many suffering the indignity of 'no - go zones' not only for citizens but police too. The history of Islamic minorities within Europe is an unhappy one. Notable mostly for failing to denounce their extremist elements, Muslims also appear hypocritical in demanding the rights they would refuse to allow others. As a result it is unsurprising Europeans tend not to hold favourable views on Islam when considering the religion as a block.
It would be easy to lay blame at the door of a weak and decrepit West that is getting its historical comeuppance and complain, with Tiberius, that "This generation is fit only for slavery" but the reality is that the rot starts at the top - resistance is stubborn below. It is Europe's lumpen that represents the continent's lifeline by refusing to engage with all the dreams of its globalist elites. Dreams that come with a price as Orwell presciently observed in his essay, In Front Of Your Nose (1946)
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against a solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
This reality is beginning to hit home at the highest levels of government. Recently Donald Tusk, president of the European Council admitted "We need to correct our policy of open doors and windows." But when such obvious statements qualify as revelations, we must ask two questions.
First, why has wisdom, upheld for centuries, and articulated well here by Keynes in 1938 been lost:
"Civilisation is a thin and precarious crust, erected by the personality and will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skillfully put across and guilefully preserved."
Second, why the direction of society is moving, at great speed, in such a different direction to the wishes of the majority of its members.
For over a decade immigration has vied with the economy as the chief concern of Britons. An opinion poll released by the European Commission in August confessed immigration was the main concern of Europeans too. Poll data released by Migration Watch UK in March 2015 showed that 76% want immigration reduced, 4% wanted it increased and 14% want it unchanged. Yet still we find ourselves at an impasse.
Identifying the mechanism or the rationale behind why our politicians both desire to ignore our needs and how they get away with it will be key to solving not just the migrant issue but many more issues besides. Reconnecting people to power through direct democracy should not be a pipe - dream in the dossiers of 'mavericks' such as Douglas Carswell: sooner or later power must be reconnected to the people.
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