While everyone was in hysterics about Brexit this week, 240 people died in the Mediterranean

Headlines raged about the ruling, attacking the judges who made the decision to align themselves with the rule of law that democracy in the UK depends upon. Twitter exploded in a furore against the “loaded foreign elite [who have defied] the will of Brit voters” and people turned their anger against the “left-wingers” who have been deemed responsible for ignoring the will of the Brexiteers.

As a nation of furiously divided people focussing their attention on furious rampages for and against the most recent Brexit decision, a real European emergency was occurring in the Mediterranean sea.

A boat containing 300 people fleeing war zones, chemical weapons and slavery, began to sink in close proximity to another. 240 people are confirmed dead, bringing the total of those who have lost their lives escaping unimaginable horrors in an overcrowded fishing boat to 4,200 – this year. Two shipwrecks were accounted for last night and a UN spokesperson described how many of the passengers were pregnant women and children. At least three babies were pulled out of the wreckage.

The deadly journey made by thousands of refugees has largely been ignored. Instead of exploring the reasons for their exodus we have been forced to turn our attention on the outcome of their voyage that we can visibly see from our shores. The notorious “Jungle” of Calais, which provided shelter to 10,000 refugees from across Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and Syria, was razed to the ground two weeks ago. The gaze of the UK was forced upon images of flames and crowds of panicked people crushed against railings flanked by armed police as they waited for a way out. We were not asked to consider the reasons for the horror, and camera lenses turned back towards Theresa May as soon as there were rumblings of another Brexit decision.

Calais and Brexit, flames and Brexit, chaos and Brexit, refugees and Brexit.

It does not seem surprising, therefore, that the British media has chosen to ignore the shipwrecks of last night. 240 people drowned far away from our shores, far away from where we can see them. Those in Calais pose a greater threat to us. They have the potential to cross our borders and seek safety within our land. Those who died last night represent the failure of Europe to protect people in the most desperate situations, in countries ripped apart by militant authorities and chemical weapons.

People such as the 14 year old Afghan boy who I met in Calais, shaking at the back of the Refugee Info Bus because he felt sick and his mother was nowhere to comfort him. People like Ahmed, who talked to me via Google Translate because I don’t understand Arabic and he couldn’t speak English but he needed his voice heard and his story to be understood.

240 people died in the sea last night, powerless in the face of an intricate tangle of legal blacklists and a global narrative of fear and xenophobia. We are asked not to consider these people. Instead we are thrust in front of photographs of Lord Chief Justice Thomas, Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales and headlines that deem them the “enemies of the people.”