The asylum seeker jumped on top of the Eurostar train as it passed into the Channel Tunnel and was electrocuted. Many of them have come from the holding centre for asylum seekers in Sangatte, five miles outside Calais port. But her plans were scuppered after the French authorities cancelled her visit. Widdecombe's trip shows that the Tories are totally ignoring their pledge to keep racism out of the election. The real reasons are war and poverty.
People trek through the Sahara desert to escape poverty in Africa.
Ken Umoli, a Nigerian refugee, described in last week's Observer how he and other refugees were forced to leave a fellow traveller to die when he ran out of water. There are a lot of bodies in that desert. Some 3,000 people are estimated to have died over the last three years trying to get into Europe in tiny boats across the Straits of Gibraltar. There are rows of unmarked graves in the public cemetery in Tarifa in Spain for corpses washed up on the shore. Nigerian refugee Ossas Osula is one of the lucky few who managed to get to Tarifa alive.