In accordance with federalist dogma, both schemes involve a massive increase in EU power and a further erosion of national sovereignty. The migration crisis might be a nightmare for the peoples of Europe, but it is a dream for the federalists. They cannot even disguise their delight at the prospect of a tightening grip on the members states. “We need a sustainable system for the future, based on common rules ad a fairer sharing of responsibility,” says the Commission's First Vice President, Frans Timmermans. The Belgian politician and federalist fanatic Guy Verhofstadt goes even further, demanding a “fair distribution scheme” that will “put in place a much needed collective European response to the refugees crisis.”

The direction of EU policy is absolutely clear. The march towards the superstate is accelerating. For decades, the Europhile brigade has tried to pretend that we stay in the EU and keep our national integrity. Indeed, when Ted Heath’s Tory Government signed us up to the Common Market in 1973, they claimed that the move would involve “no essential loss of sovereignty”. But, after the migration crisis, the deceit cannot go on.

The Remain camp will no doubt claim that the new EU migration policy will have little impact on Britain because we have an opt-out, but that is just another deception. For a start, the EU could bully us into accepting quotas by threatening not to accept any deportations of EU migrants from Britain or by imposing fines. Or the EU could just ignore our opt-out, as it so often does with policies it does not like. That would especially be true if the Referendum vote is to Remain. In that case, Britain will have absolutely no leverage, no bargaining power. And whatever the formal rules, the fact is that EU migration has a massive impact on Britain; in the year to December 2015, no fewer than 630,000 EU migrants were issued with National Insurance numbers here.