Within hours of the first pictures of tens of thousands of migrants swimming the short distance from Morocco to the Spanish north African enclave of Ceuta hitting social media on 30 July, 22 European Union leaders, the Trump administration and Israel had piled on to criticise Madrid.

The outbreak of hysteria and recrimination was a case study in 21st-century politics, driven by real-time images in a media echo chamber where populists set the agenda on migration, propagating fear, prejudice and demagogic proposals. Above all, the kneejerk reactions undermined trust between European allies and dealt a setback to EU efforts to jointly manage migration, counter people-smuggling and resist the weaponisation of migrants by non-EU countries.

That Donald Trump and JD Vance should seize the opportunity to accuse socialist Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez of inviting the mass influx by allowing more than 1 million irregular migrants already working in Spain to apply for legal status is hardly surprising, given the US administration’s own relentless drive to detain and expel illegal immigrants.

On the other hand, European leaders who signed a letter to the European Commision, criticising Spain and demanding an emergency meeting of interior ministers, should ask themselves how their behaviour helps the EU implement a coherent response to migratory pressures. Many are open to charges of hypocrisy, since Germany and Italy have, between them, regularised hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrant workers at the request of employers who need their labour as the home workforce dwindles.

There was also a monstrous foreign........

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