Nobody in the world with access to a television can be in any doubt that the US-led invasion of Iraq four years ago has been a disaster. What they, and we, are much less aware of is that it has already produced the worst refugee crisis in the Middle East since the mass exodus of Palestinians that was part of the violent birth of the state of Israel in 1948. And what we should all be scandalised by is how little the two countries most responsible for the Iraq misadventure – the US and the UK – are doing to alleviate this crisis.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, about 2m Iraqis have fled the country and 1.8m have been displaced within Iraq since the invasion of March 2003.