Evening Standard comment: One picture that will shock the whole world; Glasto's coming home; We all need to laugh

Sometimes a single image can shock, while a hundred detailed reports can pass people by. That’s why we have decided today to publish one of them today on the Evening Standard's front page and on this website: a photograph of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, lying dead, face down in the Rio Grande, on the US-Mexican border.

It’s a picture that has already caused uproar across the Atlantic, where Democrats in Congress are pushing for $4.5 billion in humanitarian aid to ease the migrant crisis.

Mr Ramírez and his daughter are a tragic, visible consequence: her tiny head is tucked in his drenched black T-shirt, her arm around his neck.

It is easy for political leaders to talk tough about cutting immigration — and win support for it too — but another thing to do so when faced with awful pictures like this.

Of course President Trump is not the first to try to control immigration — President Obama, too, once warned of the “growing humanitarian and security crisis” at the Mexican border, and made attempts to deter people from crossing.

Both, just like leaders across Europe, face the challenge of a world in which it is easier for people to migrate than ever.

In 2015, pictures of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece with his family, led to soul-searching in Europe — and to a crucial deal with Turkey — but didn’t stop many voters backing anti-immigration parties.

What’s the answer?

The public have a right to expect security at their borders, not chaos. That’s why, frankly, Trump strikes a chord when he talks of building walls, however impractical. But that shouldn’t stop people supporting immigration.

We need leaders with the confidence to defend the benefits and explain honestly what is and is not possible in managing it.

A city such as London has been transformed for the better by the fact that people from all over the world have come to live and work here. And despite the political rhetoric, polls show that voters often agree.

People from this country are more likely than anywhere else in Europe to see immigration as a positive thing.

That’s why it is good to see that both the candidates now running for the Conservative leadership are doing so on a pro-immigration ticket.

“I have always been a believer in immigration and in allowing talented people to come to this country,” Boris Johnson told the Evening Standard in his interview last week. Britain should not “pull down the shutters,” says Jeremy Hunt.

It’s a welcome change from Theresa May. In the end, openness pays.

We should not need horrific pictures such as the one of Óscar and Valeria to tell us that.

Glasto’s coming home

If you are one of the 180,000 people going, the Glastonbury dilemma starts with the weather forecast. Sunshine or showers? Wellington boots or diamanté flip-flops?

But for everyone else Glastonbury is an extraordinary event that’s become part of the summer — a festival that’s so familiar and widely broadcast that for a lot of people it almost feels like you were there even if you weren’t.

That moment in 2017 when the chant of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” swept through Worthy Farm might belong to another political age but after a summer off — to let the grass grow and the cattle graze — the festival is back.

There’s nothing else like it: a reminder that even in an age when every image and every bit of music can be streamed digitally to anyone anywhere, there’s still nothing as powerful as live events, shared together in a field in Somerset.

We all need to laugh

In 1942 Noël Coward spent 25 weeks touring wartime Britain as one of the stars of his play, Present Laughter.

Now it’s the turn of Andrew Scott — fresh from his appearance as the “hot priest” in Fleabag — to take the lead.

We give the show a five-star review — proof that while a lot has changed since it first hit the stage, the old shows can often be the best.