As autocracies collapsed across Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, Albanians had high expectations that democracy and a free-market economy would bring a better life. But Albania’s transition from dictatorship to democracy has been uneven and incomplete.

Last week, Albania’s prime minister Edi Rama angrily rejected the UK home secretary Suella Braverman’s mischaracterisation of Albanians as illegal migrants and criminals during his visit to London. A…