Over 80 percent of the world refugees live in poor countries, Rutter writes, and one of the founding principles of United Nations is that its member states should share responsibility for humanitarian problems. A desperate UNHCR, she adds, has appealed for EU countries to take in 30,000 vulnerable Syrian refugees.

Next week, we are then informed, Parliament will again debate the UK's response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Concludes Rutter: "Those who consider that sharing responsibility for supporting refugees is an important and progressive principle can ask their MPs to attend the debate and push for greater generosity".

And there lies a fascinating divergence between the "progressive left" and the "right" as represented by UKIP. From Gerard Batten in 2009 we have his booklet "Immigration: action overdue" which could not present a more extreme contrast, including a recommendation that Britain should withdraw from the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

As far as it goes, this is as close to policy as UKIP gets, but it undoubtedly represents the sentiments of a large number of the party members. And that, reinforces the issue of asylum seekers as a political football, putting "left" and "right" at opposite ends of the spectrum.

What is interesting to see in the latest UNHCR report, though, is its own "wish list" for European action, which encompasses sixteen separate points. First on the list of the refugee agency is a guarantee of protection from refoulement, the principle that a state may not oblige a person to return to a territory where he may be exposed to persecution.

UNHCR then wants a "global moratorium" on returns to Syria and to countries neighboring Syria and Egypt, which host the vast majority of refugees from Syria, it wants states should provide access to their territories and an immediate stop to "pushbacks".

The agency also asks for search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean to be strengthened while, for all those who manage to present themselves as asylum seekers, it wants "swift access to fair and effective asylum procedures".

Given the situation in Syria though, it believes the majority of people fleeing the country fall within the refugee criteria in the 1951 Refugee Convention, and should thus be recognized as refugees. If, exceptionally, they are found not to meet the criteria for refugee status, complementary forms of protection criteria are likely to be met, so they should be allowed in anyway.

UNHCR also calls for the proper application of all the "Dublin" criteria, including those designed to unite families within the EU, and it wants "adequate reception conditions for people seeking international protection in Europe, with particular attention to those with specific needs".

Few people probably realise that there is EU law on this, in the shape of the Reception Conditions Directive, with its own website. UNHCR wants Member States to ensure reception conditions are in accordance with their legal obligations.

The refugee agency also asks that detention of asylum-seekers should be avoided and only used as a last resort. Where used, states should establish strict limits and safeguards on the use of detention and explore alternatives to detention.

UNHCR is urging states to consider an array of solutions that can be mobilised to secure urgent and effective protection, including resettlement, humanitarian admission, private sponsored admission schemes, and the use of other legal programmes (student or employment visas).

It is calling upon states to make multi-annual commitments towards a goal of providing resettlement and other forms of admission for 100,000 Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016, and urges states to facilitate family reunification "in a pro-active manner", including for extended family members of Syrians who have been granted some form of protection.

This, if nothing else, signals the extent of the gap between expectations and delivery, with the issue being almost entirely ignored by the legacy media. Nevertheless, The Times has picked up a statement from Rolland Schilling, who represents the UNHCR in Britain, urging the Government to consider taking more refugees from Syria.

Schilling acknowledges that there is public concern about migration, but he also believes there is a deeply held belief that the persecuted should be protected. "I think that is a majority view. They go in parallel", he says.

Despite the UK being one of the most generous providers of aid money to Syria, Schilling warns that there is enormous pressure on Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. They have accepted the majority of 2.8 million people who have flooded out of Syria since the start of the conflict three years ago, he says.

Here, there is another stark contrast. Lebanon has taken 1,117,095 refugees, Turkey 789,678, Jordan 602,182, Iraq 225, 475 and Egypt 138,101. Europe as a whole, on the other hand, has taken a mere 123,600. 

It remains to be seen whether the humanitarian ethos will prevail over concerns about migration, but as the scale of the refugee crisis builds, it is not inconceivable that we see a backlash against the UKIP insistence that we raise the drawbridge.

In anticipation of this possibility, a sensible political party might seek to modify its own policy stance - or at least start debating the issues in a different way. It could argue that the refugee agency "wish list" is unrealistic to the point of being naïve, and come up with its own proposals for dealing with the crisis.

Maintaining a hard line stance may play well with members but, in the scheme of things, risks alienating mainstream voters to an even greater extent than it has already. 

From the broader view of the anti-EU movement, it seems to me that we must start offering some sensible ideas for the resolution of as problem that isn't going to go away, or we end up tarred with the same isolationist brush that will eventually drag UKIP into electoral obscurity. 

FORUM THREAD