A 16-year-old boy from Sudan drowns while trying to cross the channel from France to England.

The details are tragic. Two boys are reported to have set sail in an inflatable dinghy using shovels as oars. Their makeshift craft is said to have been little more than a toy. One boy was rescued, reportedly suffering from hypothermia.

You cannot consider what happened to the boy who drowned, and other migrants sailing to Europe across hostile seas, without taking stock of your own humanity.

Even the leader in today’s Sun says this is a reminder “of a human emergency, not just a political one”.

Having given humanity the nod, the Sun then takes its customary path. Labour is urged to “stop playing politics” and “throw its weight behind Home Secretary Priti Patel as she cracks down on the real villains of this piece: the evil people-traffickers”.

Patel has spent weeks playing politics by summoning up a ‘migrant invasion’ where none exists. She has clearly magnified a relatively small problem for political purposes and as a distraction from other difficulties.

You may not agree with this interpretation of her behaviour, and that’s fair enough.

But if it’s true, as widely reported, that the home secretary told Tory MPs that she wanted to change the asylum rules in a way that would make “the left… have a meltdown”, how else are we meant to characterise her behaviour?

Patel is also widely reported to have said that the asylum system is broken because “leftie Labour-supporting lawyers” send “legal letters every day to try to stop us removing people from this country”.

It has been pointed out by many, including the writer of this blog, that Patel’s hostility to immigration seems odd as her own parents were admitted to this country and allowed to flourish.

Yes, Labour should play its part – but Patel should stop using toxic language in a phoney cultural war.

Yes, too, the people-traffickers are “evil” but they are cruelly exploiting a situation which is itself immoral.

Why, for a start, do we not process migrants in France rather than leaving them to attempt hazardous channel crossings or trying to ride on or beneath lorries?

Why do we not act on our human responsibility to welcome as many migrants as possible instead of jabbing our fingers at ‘invading hordes’?

Perhaps it is just that some people consider one migrant to be one too many, while others fail to see why we cannot offer more help to those wishing to live a life less harsh.

Two new books published soon offer insights into migration. Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System is by immigration barrister Colin Yeo. At a guess one of those “leftie lawyers” Patel disparages.

His publisher’s blurb wonders how we would treat Paddington Bear if he came to the UK today…

“Perhaps he would be made destitute as a result of extortionate visa application fees; perhaps he would experience a cruel term of imprisonment in a detention centre; or perhaps his entire identity would be torn apart at the hands of a hostile environment that seems to delight in the humiliation of its victims.”

A wider historical perspective is offered by Professor Joanna Story, co-editor of Migrants in Medieval England, c.500 – c1500. This study argues that England has been shaped by “economic migration since medieval times”.

“People often do not realise that migration is central to English history throughout time,” said Story in last Sunday’s Observer.

We may be an island, but we have never been the insular Little England some would have us believe.

Tragically pointless to speculate now, but I like to think that under a kinder system that lost Sundanese boy would have reached the UK and flourished, as many have down the centuries.