Immigration

Thursday

Mark Palmer

Bordering on insanity | 3 November 2016

There are lots of signs at Gatwick about how it is unacceptable to be ‘rude or abusive’ to Border Force staff. One poster warns that losing your temper or gesticulating in a threatening manner could be a criminal offence. Keep a lid on it, is the-message. My wife Joanna and I recently had plenty of time to study these missives and just about kept a lid on it after returning from a weekend in Spain. It was a Monday evening that became a Monday night at Gatwick’s north terminal as thousands of travellers snaked back and forth for nearly an hour at passport control in an atmosphere that swung from

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Diary – 27 October 2016

I have never met Donald Trump, but I knew his parents. A fact that makes me feel about 100 years old. Which was actually nearer the age Fred and Mary Anne Trump were when, as a teenager, I made my first trip to New York. I remember riding backwards in their limousine on the way to lunch with the extended Trump clan and the lovely Mary Anne apologising that her son Donald would not be joining us. ‘You know about Donald?’ she inquired. I nodded, and recall her adding rather wistfully, ‘He’s always been the outgoing one.’ One of the great pleasures of life, I now realise — and a

The Spectator

Barometer | 27 October 2016

Folio society A new collection of Shakespeare’s work credits Christopher Marlowe as co-author of the three Henry VI plays. Some other candidates claimed to have written Shakespeare plays: FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626). His poems are said to share a similar structure. But lacks motive to use Shakespeare as a pen name. WILLIAM STANLEY, 6th EARL OF DERBY (1561-1642): A Jesuit spy claimed he was secretly writing plays. EDWARD DE WERE, 17th EARL OF OXFORD (1550-1604): Theatre patron said to have used pen name because an aristocrat could not take credit for public plays. Dead for the last 12 years of Shakespeare’s life. ROGER MANNERS 5th EARL OF RUTLAND. Said to have

Thursday

Taki

High life | 13 October 2016

New York   This is a good time to be in Manhattan, the weather’s perfect, the park and foliage still green, and daylight savings time keeps the days long. New York used to be able to build these beautiful cities within a city, like the Rockefeller Center, but that’s all in the past. The developers have got to the politicians and now have free rein. The city had an opportunity after 9/11 to make a 21st century Rockefeller Center downtown, but a shark by the name of Silverstein preferred profit to architectural achievement, as did another horror, Aby Rosen, who is busy turning uptown ugly. I’ve been walking up and

The Spectator

Barometer | 13 October 2016

Fears of a clown Professional clowns complained that the current craze for scaring people by dressing in clown outfits was damaging their trade. But why do some people find clowns frightening? — The effect was analysed in 1970 by Japanese professor Masahiro Mori as he researched robot faces. He found that the more lifelike faces induced increasing feelings of empathy until a critical point, at which point people began to find them scary. Then, as the face was made still more lifelike, empathy quickly returned. He called the effect the ‘uncanny valley’, after its shape on a graph. — Clown faces occupy a gap between primate and human, so the

The Spectator

Universities challenged

On the face of it, this year’s Nobel Prize awards have been a triumph for British scientists. No fewer than five laureates come from these shores: three physicists, one chemist and an economist. But before anyone starts praising our higher education system, there is one small snag: all five are currently working at US universities. David Thouless, who was awarded half the Physics prize, has followed a typical career path. After taking a degree at Cambridge, he took a PhD at Cornell University and a postdoc at the University of California before heading back to Britain, where he worked for 13 years at the University of Birmingham. There, he started

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Tory Theresa is Blue Labour at heart

I never really agreed with the central-thesis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — that ‘42’ is the answer to life, the universe and everything. I have no great animus against the number — it does its job, filling that yawning gap between 41 and 43. But I had never thought it actually-special until the beginning of this week. That’s when I read that the Conservative Party was 17 points ahead in the latest opinion polls, on 42 per cent. A remarkable figure. I suppose you can argue that it says more about the current state of the Labour party than it does about Theresa May’s stewardship of the country.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Corbyn leaves Ukip an open goal, and they miss it

Jeremy Corbyn is taking Labour ever further away from its traditional working class voters in the north and the midlands. As I say in The Sun today, the party now has a leader who didn’t sing the national anthem at St Paul’s, a shadow Chancellor who has praised the IRA, a shadow Home Secretary who thinks promising ‘controls on immigration’ is shameful and a shadow Foreign Secretary who sneers at those who fly the English flag. This presents Ukip with an open goal and a chance to do to Labour in the north and the midlands what the SNP did to in Scotland following the independence referendum. Indeed, half of

Thursday

The Spectator

Where are the ideas?

The Conservative party conference in Birmingham this week seemed a remarkably relaxed affair. The European question has been settled. Seldom has victory in the next-election looked more secure. The Labour conference in Liverpool had been a debacle, as the hard left set about picking off the remaining moderates. Diane James has resigned as Ukip leader after 18 days. It’s quite possible that her replacement could transform Ukip into a new working-class party — and then do to Labour in the north of England what the SNP has done to it in Scotland. One cabinet member put it well: the Tory party, he said, was like a piece of elastic that

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Theresa’s Tory love-in

Theresa May doesn’t use an autocue for her speeches. She feels that reading off a screen at the back of the hall makes it far harder to connect with the audience. But the Prime Minister had no need to worry about her connection with the audience at this conference. Tory activists love her; they regard her as one of their own and are rejoicing at her leadership. ‘The grown ups are back in charge’ was a refrain heard frequently in Birmingham this week. The mood of Tory activists has been further improved by what Mrs May has said about Brexit. Her commitment to trigger Article 50 by the end of

Thursday

Peter Jones

Let the right ones in

As the UK prepares for Brexit into the big wide world outside, it has been pointed out that the Foreign Office is sadly lacking in people with hard experience of that world, and even more lacking in people from that world. But if the Romans can do it, surely we can too. Whatever else the Romans were, they were not hung up about race. That did not mean they admired all foreigners. The satirist Juvenal was cynical about the Greeks, who would happily turn into anything you wanted them to at the drop of a hat; and doctors observed that different environments produced not only different physical make-ups but also different mentalities

Thursday

Ed West

The immigration debate shouldn’t be sugar-coated

Do you like Skittles? Do you like them so much you’d eat one from a packet even if you knew a couple were poisoned? Makes u think, ey? This was the analogy Donald Trump Jr made this week about refugees and terrorism, a tweet which caused anger, not least from the company that makes Skittles, who responded: ‘Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. We don’t feel it’s an appropriate analogy.’ This image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first. #trump2016 pic.twitter.com/9fHwog7ssN — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 19, 2016 This particular meme seems to have originated among feminists, who were making the point

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 15 September 2016

What immigration debate? Sir: Henrik Jonsson says (Letters, 10 September) that Swedes ought to learn from the Brits how to maintain a broad and dynamic public debate. I can’t say I witnessed anything approximating public debate on the topic of immigration during the referendum, when the debate was carried out through the ballot box, not in reasonable parliamentary discussion. What we need is for more senior politicians to be willing to engage in public discourse and take a non-careerist approach. Too many leaders have thought it best to avoid this toxic issue rather than risk their positions. As Enoch Powell once described the typical politicians’ view on immigration, ‘It’s better for

Thursday

James Forsyth

After Brexit, who should Britain let in?

Why has ‘trust’ became such a dominant issue in British politics in the early 21st century? Is it the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Or the arrogant ineptitude that led to the financial crisis and the bank bailouts? Or the parliamentary expenses scandal? Or is it, more than the above, the failure of successive governments to meet their immigration targets? Trust in politics will fall to dangerously low levels if-immigration continues as is following this year’s referendum. This is why the government has acknowledged that some control over EU immigration must be part of the Brexit deal. The extent of these restrictions will be key to

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Mrs May the ‘Student Killer’ should count the cost of her visa crackdown

In the post-Brexit landscape whose shape was barely glimpsed in G20 discussions at Hangzhou, one thing is clear: soon we’ll have to stop waffling about trade deals and start pushing British products the world wants to buy. One such is education, at our universities, independent schools and English-language colleges — an export sector calculated in 2011 by the now defunct Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to be worth £17.5 billion. Not only does this sector attract foreign exchange, plug funding gaps for cash-strapped universities and support thousands of jobs, it also lays the ground for future relationships with students who return home to embark on business careers. And as

Wednesday

James Forsyth

What we learnt about Brexit from Theresa May today

Theresa May began her statement on the G20 by talking about Brexit. She insisted that she wasn’t going to give a ‘running commentary’ or reveal the government’s negotiating hand as, she said, that would not deliver the best deal for Britain. In other words, we’ll all just have to wait and see what she negotiates. May’s insistence that she won’t rule anything in or out does lead to some rather bizarre moments. May repeatedly, and rightly, stressed the trade deals that the UK would seek to do outside the EU. But when Labour’s Emma Reynolds asked her to confirm that these deals would require leaving the customs union, May ducked

Monday

Tom Goodenough

Is May dropping the ‘Leave’ campaign’s immigration policy?

‘Brexit means Brexit’, Theresa May has repeatedly reassured us. But it seems Brexit might not mean an introduction of a ‘points-based’ immigration policy which Vote Leave – and a number of cabinet ministers, including Boris Johnson – had called for during the referendum campaign. The Prime Minister said the system was no ‘silver bullet’ and planned to look ‘across the board’ for answers instead. As is becoming clearer – and as James Forsyth pointed out after May’s Marr interview yesterday – the Prime Minister has a style in front of journalists which involves giving little away. So offering up the small titbit that a points system might not feature in May’s

Saturday

James Forsyth

The Cabinet’s Brexit talk

So, where are we at on Brexit? Well, we know that Theresa May wants immigration control as part of the deal which essentially rules out a Swiss or Norwegian style deal. But, as I report in The Sun, beyond that little is settled. As one Cabinet Minister said to me after the away day at Chequers this week, ‘The truth is that, at the moment, we’re still in the preparatory stage’. Cabinet Ministers were struck by how open the discussion was at Chequers. Unlike in the Cameron era, there was no early indication as to what the Prime Minister wanted the meeting to conclude. According to those present, one of

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The Swedish model. How not to welcome refugees | 3 September 2016

For a certain type of social democrat, no country gets them quite as hot and bothered as Sweden. As Toby Livendell writes in this week’s Spectator cover story, Sweden has long regarded itself as a humanitarian superpower, taking in 650,000 asylum seekers in the last 15 years. But by far the biggest issue is integration. And this was brought to stark British attention last week when a Birmingham schoolboy was murdered with a grenade in Gothenburg. So, what has gone wrong in Sweden? To answer that question, Lara Prendergast is joined on the Spectator podcast by Fraser Nelson and Ivar Arpi. Ivar says: ‘Basically the Swedish idealism ran into a

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Trump’s immigration rhetoric is more subtle than his opponents realise

To say Donald Trump ‘double-downed’ last night on his border rhetoric would be an understatement. He went full anti-illegal immigration throttle, and then some. ‘There will be no amnesty,’ he said, and he promised to deport criminal illegal aliens within one hour of his arrival in office. ‘We will build a great wall along the southern border,’ he said. ‘And Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 per cent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it.’ He also invited on to the stage a group of women whose children have been killed by illegal immigrants, the ‘Angel Moms’ — a typical, mawkish Trumpian touch. ‘If you don’t vote Trump,