A line attributed to Schopenhauer is that “all truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” This would seem to accurately describe the promulgation of the immigration restrictionist argument in the United Kingdom in recent years. A Labour Prime Minister has just publicly admitted what the country has known to be true for decades: mass immigration has been a disaster for Britain.
During the Blair and Brown years, nearly two and a half million migrants were added (net) to the UK population, about 185,000 a year. This was almost four times larger than the direst warnings of Enoch Powell, whose scaremongering predictions contributed to his being “cancelled” long before it was cool.
And so, 15 years ago, the Conservative Party promised to get net migration down to the tens of thousands. Since then, nearly 6 million migrants have legally entered Britain (not counting the many illegal entries, both officially reported and not).
But now, as we suffer violence on our streets as a result of foreign conflicts thousands of miles away, people are increasingly unable to afford a home, and women suffer everyday violence from recent arrivals (and some who have been here for too long) with absolutely no loyalty to this country, the penny is finally starting to drop.
As a result, this will be the final nail in the coffin for the ECHR, the OBR, and the whole rotten system
Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, gave a speech today that has declaratively stated that the Labour government wants to bring an end to mass migration. I don’t really believe that they will accomplish it, and I’m sure this is in part in response to the recent Reform surge. Nevertheless, I am delighted by this announcement. So, too, should be all conservatives, liberals, reform-ists, and even socialists. That’s how bad the system has been for Britain.
The reason for my delight is that this has become a real “burn the boats” moment for Starmer. He has faced down the lunatic fringes to his left who think borders are racist (even if he said similar things in the past), and has hoisted his government’s entire success to being able to achieve this existential aim.
If he does reduce immigration to the level the public want (low tens of thousands rather than the quarter of a million his white paper hints at), he will blow the Conservatives and Reform out of the water, and, frankly, deserve a second term.
As I said before, he is hilariously unlikely to achieve this. However, there is now nowhere left to hide; Labour says migration is bad for the economy and bad for society. If they fail to deal with it, Starmer gives right wing parties the perfect weapon with which to destroy him. This is a good day.
I don’t much mind whether it’s a slow awakening from a slumber of naivety, the realisation half the cabinet will lose their seats because of Gaza-sympathetic demographic change, or just electoral calculus. It’s happened now. And there’s no going back.
Newspapers were briefed that Morgan McSweeney, the No 10 Chief of Staff, was aware that the OBR’s figures on the economic benefits of migration — in particular the Boriswave of the most recent, most unskilled, and most culturally alien, arrivals, was not all it was cracked up to be.
Now the Government’s official stance is that migration hasn’t helped the economy. There are plenty of fine publications that will unpick the bogus economic arguments about mass immigration that led to this move, but what was more striking to me was Starmer’s words about the corrosive societal and cultural impact that our radical experiment has wrought across Britain.
Before I quote him, remember that this man is an atheist socialist who would, in his own words, much rather be in Davos than Westminster, and believes in international law as being more important than almost anything else. But this morning he said:
Nations depend on rules — fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values. They guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to one another. Now, in a diverse nation like ours … these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation.
And later:
When people come to our country, they should also commit to integration, to learning our language, and our system should actively distinguish between those that do and those that don’t.
This sounds like the sort of thing Kent police would throw you in a prison cell for tweeting. It also sounds completely right. Whoever drafted this speech has obviously been reading the likes of Sam Bidwell and Guy Dampier in The Critic, because it signals exactly the direction that the “online right” have been pushing for (down to extending the ILR requirements).
In one speech, Starmer has validated every talking point that the right of the Conservative Party, the whole of the Reform Party, and some brave commentators have been saying for years. There is nowhere left to hide for the Left now. The boats have been burned.
So yes, it’s only a white paper. Yes, it’s actually pretty thin gruel in terms of policy. No, I don’t think he will succeed in making any of these changes, and no, I don’t think that immigration will actually come down. But as a result, this will be the final nail in the coffin for the ECHR, the OBR, and the whole rotten system that has lumped us with such a suicidal system for so long and prevented Starmer from achieving his state objectives.
And when they fail, they will have also done so jettisoning their incantations and spells and cant about how immigration is actually good. This will provide the Right with a chance to win an almighty mandate at the next election on this issue. Whether it’s Reform or the Tories, they can finally clear out the now-undefended Augean stables, and take back control of our immigration system, our borders, and our country. For real, this time. And for good.
