Comment
JULIA HARTLEY-BREWER
Is the government lying to us about immigration, lying to themselves or do they just think we are stupid?
Every PM in recent years has promised to bring down immigration - and every single one has failed
ARE they lying to us, lying to themselves or do they just think we’re all stupid?
I’ve often felt the need to ask this question about our politicians — and never more so than over the issue of immigration.
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It’s been a major battleground in politics for decades now and there is no sign that peace will be declared any time soon.
Yesterday we got the latest official immigration statistics for the past year.
I could reel off dozens of figures for you right now but a fair summary of the situation is this: there are a HELL of a lot of people coming from abroad to live, work and study in this country.
True, the numbers have gone down a bit over the previous year but the figures are all still way higher than they were in 2019 when Boris Johnson was famously elected to “Get Brexit Done” — and that was three long years after 17.4million voted to leave the EU and take back control of our laws and, crucially, our borders.
READ MORE ON IMMIGRATION
Every PM in recent years has promised to bring down immigration. And every single one has failed. Some didn’t even bother pretending to try.
I’m old enough to remember when David Cameron promised he would get net immigration down to the “tens of thousands”. Simpler, happier times, eh?
These days, that figure is in the hundreds of thousands, with more than a million people arriving from abroad in each of the past three years.
None of this has happened by accident.
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Each time, it has been a deliberate political choice by the elected government of the day, whether it was Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown opening the doors to half of Eastern Europe, or David Cameron and his Tory successors, who threw the doors open even wider to the rest of the world.
So why did they do it when they had promised they would not?
Nearly 500 migrants cross English Channel on small boats in a single day – as Labour hunts for new border boss
Was it all about artificially boosting GDP (the more of us there are, the more output there would be) or to fill the gaps in the jobs market which the existing population refuse to do, or just because so many of our political elite are convinced that advocating open borders is what makes you a NICE person?
Did they think we wouldn’t notice? That they’d just sneak in millions of extra people and we’d all carry on as before in one big multicultural melting pot?
Oh, we’d just have to compete for jobs with the new arrivals, forcing down wages, while the extra demand for homes pushed up rents and house prices.
And did they think we don’t have enough talented Brits to train as doctors or nurses to work in the NHS instead of importing them from poorer countries which are often in much greater need of their services?
‘Nothing to see here!’
Have the London metropolitan elite simply been too busy enjoying their endless supply of cheap imported nannies, cleaners and gardeners — not to mention that nice barista at the coffee shop — to notice the impact on everyone else?
Apparently so, but it’s been impossible for ANYONE not to notice the influx of illegal migrants, risking their lives on rickety dinghies across the Channel day after day to languish on our asylum process waiting list year after year.
In the latest instalment of Government promises that won’t be kept, Keir Starmer has pledged he’s going to “smash the gangs” of people-smugglers.
I don’t want to ruin the ending of this Netflix special but — spoiler alert — he won’t.
Neither will he “significantly” cut LEGAL immigration over what is already baked in to happen thanks to Rishi Sunak’s belated student and work visa changes and the drop in Ukrainian and Hong Kong arrivals.
Now, to add insult to injury, we learn that Labour ministers are considering a deal with the EU to allow under-30s free movement between the EU and the UK to live and work where they please.
They will carry on doing exactly the same as they’ve been doing for the past few decades: Importing millions more people.
Julia Hartley-Brewer
“Nothing to see here!” we’ll be told.
After all, what could possibly go wrong when most young Europeans speak English as a second language and many face sky-high youth unemployment at home?
The great and the good will keep telling us that tackling mass immigration is a high priority and that numbers will come down.
Then they will carry on doing exactly the same as they’ve been doing for the past few decades: Importing millions more people to our already crowded shores.
And come the next election, they’ll make the same promises all over again.
So let’s come back to the question I started with: Are they lying to us and lying to themselves, or do they just think we’re all stupid?
I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that it must be all three.
Louise is pushing us to the limit
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MOTORISTS have become the nation’s cashpoint as, every day, the Government and local councils come up with yet another wheeze to squeeze more dosh out of car owners.
Now the Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has backed councils to decide on road safety schemes, such as 20mph zones, in their area.
Sure, it makes sense to cut speeds on quiet residential streets and near schools but, in my neighbourhood, the 20mph limit also applies to a major arterial highway, six lanes across!
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We are told this will save lives and cut pollution. But really it is just about raising money by fining motorists for driving at 23mph. Jeez, why not just lock ’em up and throw away the key for their heinous crime while we’re at it?
Wouldn’t it make more sense for the people who don’t like cars to move to a nice island in the Outer Hebrides where they can slowly walk from one end to the other every day without being bothered by drivers?
Cruel seas of fate
THE sinking of the luxury superyacht Bayesian off Sicily is as shocking as it is sad.
Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, one of seven who died, wasn’t just a rich man with a big yacht – his life is the tale of the rise and fall of a tragic hero.
He was a true British success story: An extraordinary boy from an ordinary family who came up with a bright idea and turned it into a multi-billion pound business.
He then faced losing everything – his riches and his freedom – in a long battle against criminal fraud charges in the US over the sale of his company.
Two months ago, he was found innocent and this sailing trip was supposed to be a celebration of a fresh start.
Instead he lost his life to the cruel seas of fate.
Only the Bard himself could have penned such an epic Shakespearean tragedy.
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