The same could be true of most political leaders - Chritian, Jewish, Islamic, Humanis, Marxist...It's what they are there to do. It's what we collectively want. It gets votes, it gets cheers.And it's te same with the media, it sells papers. The leaders climb on the bandwagon, but what makes it a bandwagon is the mass of ordinary people who follow the band, and like tthe tunes it plays.

Sometimes some horrible event will make people stop and start back in disgust at what they have colluded with. For some people the deaths in Dover will have that effect, and maybe for a few days the anti-immigrant rhetoric will calm down a bit. But I can't see the bandwagon changing direction just yet.

Here's what Paul Foot wrote in Tuesday's Guardian about te rally I mentioned earlier:

Q1: How many mainstream London-based daily and Sunday newspapers have devoted excessive space to activities and campaigns hostile to asylum seekers?

A: All of them.

Q2: How many such papers received a press release with details of a demonstration on June 24 welcoming asylum seekers and calling for an end to the campaign against them?

A: All of them.

Q3: How many of these papers even mentioned the demonstration when it was attended by more than 8,000 people and addressed by MPs and anti-racist campaigners?

A: None of them.

And, apart from that brief mention, that included The Guardian.