Does the latest row about the mosque at Córdoba belong to the interminable arguments about whether the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece? Another version of this argument was rehearsed in the press last week, about whether a Benin bronze cock should be returned to Africa by Jesus College, Cambridge. “A Cambridge University college has bowed to pressure to remove a controversial bronze cockerel statue looted during a British colonial expedition in the 19th century,” reported The Daily Telegraph breathlessly, “after students asked for it to be repatriated.”

Or perhaps the hoo-ha about the mosque at Córdoba forms part of the historic fallout from great movements of peoples, touched upon a few days ago by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. “Archbishop: it isn’t racist to fear migration” was the headline in the Daily Mail, or, as The Sun headlined it obscurely: “God it wrong”.

“Branding anyone worried about the impact of mass migration as racist is ‘absolutely outrageous’, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said,” The Times reported. “‘Fear is a valid emotion at a time of such colossal crisis,’ he told The House magazine.”