Tim Farron has written a moving, compassionate and persuasive article for Jewish News in which he calls for an initiative to help bring Syrian refugee children to safety in the same way as Jewish children under threat from the Nazis were brought to Britain in the 1930s.

In 2014, of the 13,000 unaccompanied children who were registered in Italy alone, 4,000 of them went missing. Refugee and migrant children in these circumstances are incredibly vulnerable, and there is a real risk that these missing children were subject to trafficking, forced labour and exploitation. Europe cannot continue to let this happen. If the UK government will step up and accept just 3,000 of these children, who have been processed by UNHCR and have been confirmed as having no identifiable family, then we can go on to press the rest of Europe, and indeed the world’s, governments to do the same.

Every politician in this country is agreed the Kindertransport, which brought over unaccompanied Jewish children from Germany in 1938, was the right thing to do. Now we need a new Kindertransport to save another group of vulnerable children, and send a clear signal of the renewal of the British values of which we are so proud.

He started off by wondering what it would take for him to leave his life and all he knows to seek refuge in a strange place:

What level of desperation would drive me to flee my home with, or without, my family and leave everything in my life behind?

This is a question I think many Europeans have been asking themselves as the current refugee crisis has unfolded before our eyes. But I know it is also a very personal question for many Jews, who were forced to answer the same question three-quarters of a century ago.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now understand their decision was truly a matter of life and death. It was certainly on my mind during my recent visit to the Greek island of Lesbos, which received more than 120,000 refugees on its shores in October alone.

And he took on the right wing press for (as usual) not getting it, complaining that the refugees weren’t poor enough:

Speaking with families as they arrived on Lesbos and watching them contact friends and relatives with messages of safe landing and relief, I had a completely opposite reaction. It’s true that the doctors and plumbers and teachers who I spoke to weren’t, on the whole, poor. But to me there’s no clearer signal of the desperation these people are facing than their seeming wealth. It highlights the fact that they are refugees fleeing instability and war, not migrants hoping to get a bit richer in Europe, as the government would like us to believe.

That fact is also reflected in the data the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, is collecting on why these people are on the move. A high percentage quote the need to educate their children as a key reason why they have left. In some cases, it has been four years since their children have had any formal education, and with no end to the conflict in sight, they do not want to risk a lost generation which will be unable to rebuild the country if the opportunity did arise.

You can read his whole article here.

* Newshound: bringing you the best Lib Dem commentary in print, on air or online.