UNFORTUNATELY, football didn’t come home – but that doesn’t mean that the World Cup was a waste of time.

The best performance by an English team at a major tournament since 2015, when the Lionesses came third. But the best for the men since 1990, when I was four!

Gareth Southgate and his squad brought us together. It was needed.

After all it is clear that the divisions from, among other things, the EU Referendum have not healed.

And this week, Oxfordshire was among the areas to welcome the most divisive American President for a generation.

I will be very honest here: my opinion of Donald Trump is not a positive one, for multiple reasons.

But it his attitude towards immigration that angers most people including me.

There is no doubt that concerns about immigration helped Trump’s rise to power.

Now, concerns about immigration are nothing new: Britain’s debate on immigration goes back to beyond the 1950s and beyond.

Enoch Powell’s 'rivers of blood' speech is one of the most well-known and controversial in modern British political history – but it is current developments I find particularly alarming.

Images from the US of immigrant children detained in cages away from their parents were chilling.

Nowadays we wouldn’t herd chickens in this way, so why is it ok for us to do it to people who are just after the chance of a better life?

Trump is not the only one who should be ashamed.

Here in Britain, we have the scandalous treatment of the Windrush generation, which brought down a Home Secretary and shamed the government.

These people were, after all, invited to Britain in the 1950s to help rebuild our country after the Second World War.

The truth then was the same as it is now; immigration benefits Britain. Immigrants contribute more in taxes, commit less crime and claim less in welfare than native Brits.

And when we talk about native Brits, what is it that we are actually referring to? Do we mean the Celts, or the Romans who came after? Are we talking about the Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings and then Normans who conquered them?

The point is that our country’s history, like America’s, is one of people moving here and settling.

And we should remember that borders are arbitrary things. There are no natural lines separating France from Germany or the UK from Ireland, the USA from Mexico.

It is fair to have concerns about security and worry about the impact of people moving into areas already struggling with local services.

But we didn’t choose to be born in this country. And the same is true for those born elsewhere.

So my hope is that rather than following Trump, we can all follow our mild-mannered, waistcoat-wearing national head coach. He spoke of his team representing 'modern England' and its diversity. He hoped his team’s success would 'affect other things that are even bigger' than football. I hope so, too.