Europe is trying to figure out how to close its borders to 10 million immigrants fleeing civil war and poverty. Sections of America are trying to figure out how to discourage Mexicans and Muslims.

And Britain devoted the past week to argument about an immigration ban on just one man: Donald Trump.

The formal legislative debate occupied Westminster for three hours on Wednesday, despite several serious – some would say terminal – snags with the plan, including the lack of any parliamentary authority to ban the ginger miscreant in question, the concurrent lack of any express intention evinced by the target to travel personally to Britain in the immediate future, and the fact that (unlike, one imagines, many putative immigrants) he already owns $1.5 billion worth of golf courses there.

Nevertheless! A robust and proper democracy is never deterred by anything so trivial as the complete unworkability of the legislative proposition at hand (See: The Australian Parliament and about the last five federal Budgets.)