We all feel sorry for child refugees but how will we pay for their needs | Michael White

Cameron’s U-turn is great news for 3,000 stranded Syrian children but it is right to ask where the money will come from

It is not every day that the lead editorial in the Daily Mail could be transposed with minor amendments to the pages of the Guardian or the FT. But it happened on Thursday in the wake of David Cameron’s concession that up to 3,000 refugee children from Syria will now be allowed into Britain. In fact, on this occasion the Guardian’s editorial is more hard-nosed about underlying realities.

A small good deed has been done in an all-too-wicked world. Let the Mail claim the credit for the campaign to show compassion to refugee children. But it is not alone. Personally, I prefer to think that the Labour peer Alf Dubs, rescued as a Jewish child from Adolf Hitler’s clutches, has repaid a debt to history.

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