IMMIGRATION

 

Immigration

It’s time the British grew up about immigration (among other things like nationalism, sovereignty, public ownership and taxes, for instance).

If no politician has the guts to say that Britain needs immigration, badly, let me state the obvious. In common with all developed European nations, Britain has an aging population and declining birth rate among nationals. Britain is in reality in competition with other developed European nations for the most capable of immigrants; it needs to be attractive to those people. So a determined anti-immigration policy is not a great start, is it. Of course, some might object, the most capable can come in but that assumes a queue of them waiting to do that and a screening system to sort the wheat from the chaff and there is no evidence of either. As Sunak himself admitted a year ago, the UK approach to immigration is «broken» (his word).

So what bout the small boats and number of would-be immigrants, of unknown and various capability arriving that way? Well several other European countries with fewer resources receive more, even if they don’t all arrive in small boats, and manage to cope. So what is the big issue?

The answer, in the UK, would seem to be that making that a big issue of small boat arrivals deflects attention from much more important issues that the british are experiencing the effects of, on health care, cost of livig, degraded public services generally and very low economic growth in relation to their peers.

It's time for the British public to wise up and man up. Failure to do so will see the British choosing between unicorns offered by politicians at the next general election, the same unicorns that gave it Brexit. It's time for Britain to discover, accept and face reality