Ahmed Aboutaleb arrived in the Netherlands aged 15 from Morocco. He recalls how he left behind “a small house without electricity or running water, a cow, a donkey and a few rocks”. Thirty-two years later, he is mayor of Rotterdam, one of a rising generation of non-white European politicians.

Barack Obama’s election as US president has sparked soul-searching in Europe about why so few minority politicians have prospered there. “Looking for the French Barack Obama,” headlined the French newspaper Le Monde. In Mr Obama’s own words: “In no other country on earth is my story even possible.”