In this summer of 2015, there is concern in the UK about the pressure from would-be migrants attempting to break into the country at our border with France: there are about 5000 migrants at Calais, trying to make the crossing to the UK. Perhaps 50 people per night make the crossing successfully.

A UN study recently reported that ‘many consider Africa’s population growth a bit frightening, with predictions placing the continent’s population at 1.9 billion by 2050 (it is currently about 1.17 billion), and 4.1 billion by 2100, over one third of the world’s population by then. Most of African countries’ populations will at least triple as they have very high fertility rates, and very little family planning in most regions’.

The population of Nigeria alone is currently projected to double from the present 187 million by 2050, and exceed 1 billion by 2100. There is zero chance of Nigeria being able to employ or feed  this number of people, and we must expect that a proportion of them will try to migrate to Europe. These numbers could make the present ‘crisis’ look like a Sunday school outing.

It would be good if we could help African countries, through aid and education, to avoid this potentially catastrophic situation, but we can’t reasonably expect them to listen to us unless we speak to them from a position of high moral advantage. At the moment, we have no population policy of our own, we have no Population Minister, we import most of our food because of our own overpopulation, and England’s population density is twice that of Nigeria.

National projects like HS2, London runways, and building 250,000 new homes every year ‘to accommodate our growing population’ are irrelevant distractions. We must tackle the real problem of UK and worldwide overpopulation.