Immigration

‘A historic catastrophe’ is how Martin Bright describes it. He is referring to the policy by which successive governments in the UK, Conservative, Labour and coalition, are accused of having promoted the worst people into the positions of Muslim community leaders. The specific case that sparks this reflection is the case of Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin. Since leaving Bangladesh and becoming a British citizen he has been at the very pinnacle of Britain’s interfaith and moderate Muslim industry. Here he is with Prince Charles at the Islamic Foundation in Leicester. Major politicians of all parties as well as numerous ‘faith leaders’ have rubbed shoulders with him. He was a founder and leading

Much of the coverage of today’s Immigration Bill has centred around those controversial ‘go home’ vans, now ditched because they only sent one person home. Theresa May told the Commons this afternoon that ‘we won’t be rolling out the vans, they were too much of a blunt instrument’. In response to a question from Keith Vaz, she said: ‘What I said to the right honourable gentleman is I didn’t have a flash of blinding light one day and walk into the Home Office and say, I know, why don’t we do this?’ What I have done is looked at the interim evaluation in relation to the vans. There were some

When you discuss Boris Johnson’s leadership prospects with Tory MPs, one subject nearly always comes up: immigration. The Mayor is a liberal on the subject while most of the party takes a far more sceptical view. Tory MPs wonder how he’ll explain to the electorate why he once backed an amnesty for illegal immigrants. But Boris’s Telegraph column today shows how he can make a better — and more demotic — case for immigration than any other politician. He is prepared to tackle the subject and, what he calls, ‘this sense of indigenous injustice’ head-on. He’s also surely right that the solution to ever-rising house prices in London is to build

Is immigration still a taboo subject? The debate may have opened up for politicians but voters are still anxious about discussing it, as a new poll from Sky News demonstrates. 42 per cent stated they think the current debate about immigration is being unfairly ‘shut down’ by accusations of racism, compared to just 24 per cent who think it is sensible and healthy. 40 per cent also believe they can’t discuss immigration openly because they are worried they will be seen as a bigot. As Nigel Farage has frequently warned, Westminster appears to take a rather different view of immigration. In the last 12 months, all three party leaders have

Say this for the government, they are at least consistent. Their contemptible lobbying bill is now followed by their equally contemptible immigration bill. Sometimes you think that if it weren’t for Michael Gove and for the fact that David Cameron isn’t Ed Miliband there’d be few reasons to support this government at all. And this immigration bill really is contemptible. Politics is often a question of signalling and what this bill signals, alas, is that the government prefers the presumption of guilt to the presumption of innocence. It is a bill that turns ordinary Britons into snitches for central government. A bill that will make life more inconvenient for millions

I guess the ‘unite the Right’ memo has not got through to some Tories, with Michael Heseltine calling Ukip ‘a racist party’ and James Wharton saying they’re ‘an awkward group of strange people’. That may be unwise — rather like attacking your customer-base — but it’s also untrue. Small Right-wing parties have a huge disadvantage because, although lots of people are socially conservative, soc-cons tend on average to be low in social skills and charisma and so the normals are easily driven away by the weirds, especially when immigration is an issue. But the early stages are the hardest, when any party right of the mainstream can become toxified and

We had a Bulgarian chap do up our house. Lovely guy, worked all day and never wanted a break, and I didn’t have to drop my aitches or pretend to like football around him. Actually he turned out to be Polish but after weeks of me asking questions about Bulgaria he presumably felt too embarrassed and just played along with it. But there are many Bulgarians working in north London, and Birmingham, and they tend to be quite skilled, there being restrictions on who can work here. Naturally as those restrictions are removed, and as the quantity of immigration goes up, the quality goes down. MigrationWatch claim that net migration

Following this morning’s car crash radio interview, this is how Chris Bryant tried to win over the audience at the start of his speech on immigration to the IPPR… Come back Les Dawson, all is forgiven. PS: The full speech is here. The Telegraph’s Matt Holehouse has compared the pre-briefing and the delivered speech. As expected, the sections about Tesco and Next have been substantially rewritten. Yet to no avail; the damage has been done. Will Bryant survive Ed Miliband’s reshuffle?  

First the white vans, now the spot checks – Nigel Farage is being given fresh voice by the Home Office’s attempts to tackle illegal immigration. He has said of the spot checks: ‘Spot checks and being demanded to show your papers by officialdom are not the British way of doing things. Yes of course we want to deal with illegal immigration but what’s the point of rounding people up at railway stations if at the same time they are still flooding in at Dover and the other nearly 100 ports in this country. I’m astonished that the Home Office has become so politicised…before long they will be live video-streaming of these arrests.