Douglas Murray is an English writer whose book, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration,Identity, Islam explores the rapidly changing nature of the continent. He is an interesting, articulate man who is rarely heard in the mainstream media because he is “always banging on about immigration”. And banging on about immigration could lead viewers and readers dangerously close to perilous shoals, like supporting Brexit.

Having said that, Murray does write for The Spectator. And he does occassionly get interviewed. In the little segment below of a longer interview with Mark Steyn, Murray discusses the interesting phenomenom that Europeans generally want to have more children than they actually do have. (Shannon discussed this trend last year.)

But why is there that gap between the desire and the realisation? What is the slip twixt cup and lip? And why is it that governments tend to reach for immigration as the solution for falling birth and fertility rates rather than other policy levers?

Now, I am less sanguine than Murray as to the ability of governments to reverse falling fertility rates (see for example France's recent fertility decline) — but could they at least try to do more to help families before deciding that the only solution is socially disruptive mass immigration?

