Liberals are not just stupid – they’re dangerous

We held a small party to celebrate the news that the UK had seen its largest rise in population in 50 years: a jump of 1 per cent in only 12 months to a respectable total of 68.3 million people. Just crisps and soft drinks, you understand. Nothing wildly extravagant. All patriots feel proud of the speed with which our numbers have been rising of late, because naturally we wish for the UK to be the biggest and best in the world – and we are on our way.

At the current rate of increase, the populations of Turkey, Iran and Thailand could be surpassed within a dozen or so years, although we have a way to go before we catch up with the real big boys, like Bangladesh. Our canny policy of allowing into the country anybody who wants to come, especially if they are from some maniacal, fly-blown, Stone-Age-desert theocracy and would quite like to kill us, is paying dividends. Ever onwards and upwards.

There was also the associated good news that Ardit Binaj is a small, but important, part of that 68.3 million – because for a while it looked as if we were going to lose him. Rescued just in the nick of time by the dependable European Convention on Human Rights, Ardit, aged 32, is Albanian and has been a most industrious member of the UK’s flourishing burgling community, with a string of convictions for breaking into homes and making the lives of those who live in them miserable and frightened. He had been due to be deported to Albania since, on balance, we believed that he had given enough of himself to the British people these past few years; but his lawyers lodged an appeal with the courts on the grounds that he had a right to a family life in this country.