The dinghy issue, for me, isn’t about immigration at all. It’s about fairness. On this you have to start from first principles. If you believe in borders then it follows that borders must be enforced. I know some would happily close the borders, but that’s a different debate. As it stands, because we, as a country, believe in borders, and we recognise that not all who wish to come here can come here. We have an immigration system. It’s more generous than I would like. But that’s the rule of law decided by a flawed but legitimately elected government.

The weakness in that system is antiquated asylum regime which is wide open to abuse – and not only is it being abused, it is weaponised by an army of human rights lawyers and NGOcrats to subvert our entire immigration system to bring about the open borders their liberal ideology demands. The majority – democracy – is subordinate to the rich few. The self-declared citizens of nowhere.

That makes this bigger than the immigration debate. This exposes who really has the power. Those who have it do not wield it legitimately. The daily flotilla of dinghies is just a symptom of that. One of many symptoms of a decaying and moribund democracy. Though there is disagreement in the debate on the Linton on Ouse facility, even refugee advocacy groups agree it’s the wrong place. But it won’t be the people who live there who make the final decision. Local democracy is already dead.

What makes this such a flashpoint issue is the essential dishonesty of of the progressive left. Most of us can agree that we can and should help genuine refugees. Though there are many ways to do that. It does not follow that we can or should open our borders to all comers. Moreover, the status of refugee implies an eventual return to their country of origin, but we all know that those who pay smugglers to cross the channel do so to start a new life here regardless of whether they have any right to do so.

We are persistently fed the lie that dinghy arrivals are desperate and destitute when most are economic migrants who have chosen Britain and see it as their right to be here. That right, though, is being decided one court case at a time, in defiance of the majority public will. It is for the people and their political apparatus to decide who has a right to be here, not out of touch judges. The bloated dysfunctional system of human rights and international treaties is now in direct conflict with democracy.

The subsequent row over human rights is not about human rights at all. The NGOcracy and the liberal elites know that reform of human rights is an attack on their power to dictate to the rest of us. These are people imbued with the notion that they are more enlightened than the rest of us, who have used their influence to stifle debate and strangle democracy, believing liberal democracy means getting their own way every single time and that decisions they perceive to be wrong should be corrected by the courts.

To a very large extent, democracy is all about messy and unsatisfying compromises, and the democratic process is about managing consensus. Nobody gets it all their own way. But on fundamental issues, borders especially, there is very often no compromise to be had. Either you believe in borders or you don’t.

When the democratic process is then side-lined in favour of rule by legal and judicial elites then consent to be governed begins to evaporate. That’s what’s happening here. We voted for an end to mass immigration, but it’s activist judges who have the final say. This cannot be sustained.

What’s worse is the hypocrisy. The liberal chatterati pretend to speak of the poorest but when it comes to bogus asylum seekers, they’re all too happy to dump unlimited numbers on the places already struggling with problems of their own. Rotherham, Bradford, Rochdale. You know the list.

When challenged on how many should be allowed to come, and where we’re going to put them, they have no answers. The only time you’ll see an honest answer is on the far left – where York’s MP says that it doesn’t matter if you have to wait longer for a doctor’s appointment or class sizes grow. It doesn’t matter if your neighbourhood is turned into a lawless slum. She is at least to be commended for her honesty, if not her intelligence. Rachael Maskell relies on the university payroll and student vote so the working class of York doesn’t have a voice.

Ultimately these people don’t believe in democracy or the nation state as you or I understand it. They believe in the cult of human rights where the citizen has no more rights than anyone who rocks up in a dinghy, and that public funds exist only to massage their already overinflated egos. They certainly don’t believe in freedom of speech, and though they notionally think we should be allowed to vote, they prefer it if votes don’t influence anything. Their version of democracy is a sham.

This last week, Dominic Raab has announced a series of reforms to the human rights apparatus, and on face value, they look like they may help to unpick the current mess, but one can’t help but notice that we are always one new law away from solving the problem. It might piss off all the right people, but nobody believes the Tories will go the whole hog and actually start deporting those with no right to be here. That’s the real test of whether this government wants to see another term. Unless voters can see that their votes can change things we will see this issue take to the streets.