Keir Starmer is wrong to think immigration is just a numbers game

Should the government set a cap on immigration? Do we need to pull out of the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) to take control of our borders? Will Keir Starmer’s plan to cut numbers – which involves cutting the recruitment of overseas care workers – work?

All vital questions, not least because the result of the next election may depend on the answers. But it is striking that the debate around immigration, and the government’s plan outlined this morning by the Prime Minister, are focused almost entirely on numbers.

The total number of immigrants allowed in is fundamental, of course. The runaway scale and the impact on housing and public services have pushed immigration to the top of the political agenda, fuelling the sense that politicians from the two main parties are unwilling to act. But while the total matters, it’s far from being the only issue with immigration. If – for a thought experiment – we admitted 100,000 brilliant entrepreneurs into the country every year, each of whom created ten jobs, immigration would more or less immediately cease to be an issue.

In other words, the total number matters, but what matters even more is who they are and how they behave. For the government, that means focusing on skills and language. Of course, skilled migrants are the migrants everyone says they want. And the PM seems to think that by supposedly getting tough with language skills and insisting immigrants speak English, everything will somehow fall into place. But these are both red herrings, because they miss a key point. Because none of this will make any difference if we do not stop providing a home for people who actively reject our values: Western values of tolerance, freedom and mutual respect.

The economic element behind the strain put on social cohesion by immigration is important, but it is – to put it mildly – ludicrous to welcome into our country those who reject everything we stand for. And we do this as an article of faith – as if it is somehow indecent even to mention that this is an issue, let alone to do anything about it.

Take the grooming gangs. So entrenched is the refusal to accept that there are cultural issues involved in immigration, and so fearful are the authorities – still – of having these cultural issues formally identified, that they first covered up what happened and now, even after the scandal is well known, still reject the idea of a national inquiry.

Instead of siding with the victims, the British state continues, in effect, to side with the perpetrators, whose values treat Western woman as whores. Or take the terror plot uncovered earlier this month in which a number of Iranian nationals living here were arrested. Does anything about that sentence strike you as odd? The fact they lived here should be very odd indeed. But it isn’t, is it? It is entirely to be expected. We do not know the full details of the suspects, but we well know – because the security services and ministers have repeatedly voiced concerns – that Iran poses a major threat to our safety here in the UK. But the suspects were waved into the country with open arms, free to go about their business as they wished.

And so, too, we allow a group which shares sermons and speeches by Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, to run Camp ­Wilayah, a summer camp for nine-to-14-year-olds in the Hertfordshire countryside. Ahlulbayt Islamic Mission (Aim), the organisers, described Qasem Soleimani, the former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, a “great hero”. No one has suggested there is any suspicion of criminal activity in this, but it is what one might perhaps call a rum do.

Even now, when the cultural consequences of unchecked immigration are so clear, it is still regarded by the likes of Keir Starmer as unacceptable to point any of it out. Anyone who does so is an extremist or a racist. Is it any wonder that the one politician who is known for having done so is now leading a party that is soaring ahead in the polls?