We Praised the Corridors. We Should Have Counted the Margin.

There is a comfortable story available this week, and I would like to talk you out of it. The corridors held; the fusion line held; the lights and the taps stayed on under the worst heat in memory. All true, all earned. But hold is not the same word as gain, and we flatter ourselves when we blur them. Everything that worked this week worked at full stretch, with nothing in reserve — the very definition of a system one bad season from failure. Meanwhile the ministers in Concordat session cannot agree how to share what is already too little, and past 108 million registered migrants keep moving through corridors rationed against a ceiling set elsewhere. The competence is real and I salute it. But competence spent to stand still is not progress; it is the interest on a debt we keep not paying. Applaud the engineers. Then ask, out loud, what happens the week the margin isn't there.