How on earth can we keep adding a population the size of Leeds to UK every year? Labour MUST get a grip on immigration
I’VE got some good news, some bad news and some REALLY bad news to tell you. Which would you like first?
Let’s start with the good news. According to official figures published yesterday, net migration to Britain fell by 20 per cent in the past year.
This is largely due to the last Tory government’s change in the rules preventing most foreign students from being able to bring their families with them.
That drop in new arrivals will be welcomed by the majority of voters as evidence — at long last — that politicians are starting to listen to their demands, to stem the flow of mass immigration.
Which brings us to the bad news, which is that, despite that fall in numbers, there are still a HUGE number of people arriving; 728,000 in the year to June 2024.
That’s the equivalent of the entire population of Leeds, our third-biggest city, in just one year.
But, wait, it gets worse.
Here’s the REALLY bad news. The actual figure is probably far higher than that, because number crunchers at the Office for National Statistics only came up with that 20 per cent drop after they realised they had managed to miss 166,000 migrants off their records for 2023, pushing them up from 740,000 to a record peak of 906,000. Oops!
No wonder we can’t get on top of illegal migration when officials struggle to keep track of hundreds of thousands of LEGAL arrivals!
An easy mistake to make, eh? Even though all of those arrivals (the vast majority coming from outside the EU) would have needed to show a passport and visa to get into the country.
No wonder we can’t get on top of illegal migration when officials struggle to keep track of hundreds of thousands of LEGAL arrivals!
Whatever the true figures will turn out to be for this year, immigration has become the touchpaper of British politics.
Just 30 years ago, net migration to the UK was below 50,000 a year. Since 2010 an extra 3.7million people have been added to our population.
And now the ONS predicts our population will rise by another 6.6million by 2036 — almost entirely due to immigration. That’s like adding SIX new Birminghams.
All of which brings us back to the here and now, and to the Conservative Party’s new leader Kemi Badenoch, who this week chose the topic of immigration for her first major policy speech.
She’s tackling the No1 issue for many Tory voters and, crucially, the top issue for many Tories who turned to Reform UK or didn’t bother voting at all on July 4.
She certainly made all the right noises — admitting that the Conservatives had “got it wrong” on immigration, promising to “rebuild trust” with a vow to bring in an annual cap of 100,000 on new visas.
She also said the party would review the UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights and consider repealing the Human Rights Act, in a review of every aspect of immigration policy.
The REALLY bad news for the country is if our politicians keep on making promises on immigration that they catastrophically fail to keep.
Badenoch was also right to say the Conservatives had to stop being “squeamish” about talking about the negative aspects of mass immigration on both our economy and culture.
The much-touted claim that mass legal immigration has boosted our economy has been exposed as the lie it always was, with most arrivals not earning enough to be net contributors, while also forcing down wages for Brits.
Broken promises
Meanwhile, the damage to our social cohesion and national culture cannot be over-estimated, with so many new arrivals living parallel lives in isolated communities rather than integrating and assimilating into our way of life.
Badenoch talked the talk but it will be up to voters to decide if she can walk the walk, if she were ever elected as our next PM.
She is, after all, just the latest Tory leader of many promising to bring down immigration to the “tens of thousands”, while the numbers have steadily rocketed.
The good news for Badenoch is that immigration policy looks set to be a key dividing line between the Tories and Labour, and a convincing plan to tackle the scale of both legal and illegal arrivals could help the Conservatives woo back Reform UK voters and win their way back into office.
The bad news for the Conservative Party is that voters may well say they’ve heard it all before and been let down too many times.
As Nigel Farage asked: “Why on Earth would I or anyone else believe them now?”
The REALLY bad news for the country is if our politicians keep on making promises on immigration that they catastrophically fail to keep.
Driven to despair by net zero
SOUND the klaxon, it’s another Net Zero U-turn alert!
After the Tories had to delay their heat pump mandate by years, Labour have now been forced to rethink the state-mandated quotas for sales of electric vehicles.
Despite now requiring 22 per cent of new car sales to be EVs – with targets rising every year – and fines of £15,000 for every petrol or diesel car sold in breach of those targets – eco-fanatical politicians have discovered they can’t actually FORCE drivers to buy motors they do not want, with the nation’s car lots now full of unsold EVs.
Funnily enough, the authorities didn’t have to ban the horse and cart or fine people for using them when motor vehicles first came on to the market. People wanted to buy them simply because they were better.
As I’ve been telling politicians of every hue for years, their hopeless Net Zero policies simply will not survive contact with reality.
Latest score: Reality 1; Net Zero 0.
IS there a global shortage of women footballers?
I only ask because apparently the BBC couldn’t manage to find more than four of them when they chose their five nominees for the prestigious Women’s Footballer of the Year Award.
The fifth was Zambia and Orlando Pride striker Barbra Banda – who controversially went on to win the public vote this week – despite failing to meet gender eligibility rules for the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in 2022.
She allegedly had testosterone levels that exceeded those permitted by the Confederation of African Football.
The award led to JK Rowling accusing the BBC of “spitting in women’s faces”, while Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies decried this insult to sportswomen everywhere.
But where were our mighty Lionesses when this women’s footballing award was handed to Banda? Their silence was staggering.
It is high time we heard the Lionesses stand up for women’s sport.