THE comedian and writer David Baddiel is aerated about the new Conservative poster. But I can’t see what his problem is. The poster is actually making it clear that nothing will be done to stem immigration.
There are several clues and I am surprised that Baddiel, with his double first from Cambridge, hasn’t spotted them.
The first is the presentation. This isn’t Ukip – every country proudly displays its flag, except possibly us. No, it’s pure Rishi bullsh*t. The lad is an ex-Goldman Sachs eager-beaver type whose taste in graphics is like that of Alan Sugar’s ‘apprentices’ selling pots of jam to demonstrate their marketing skills, without the slightest intention of making a career in preserves. The flag is there (twice, if you look again) because some twentyish arse in his PR team thinks it will appeal to half-brained elderly nostalgiaphiles who wear check shirts and corduroys.
There are plenty of red bullet points – looks so businesslike, just like New Labour used to be (when everything was ‘shake up’, ‘crack down’ and ‘roll out’.) And 5ft 7in Rishi is shot from below – punters want the father of their people to be tall – with a Serious Look on his face.
To anyone with open eyes the whole thing shows they don’t share our worldview and have complete contempt for us – they think it’s so easy to push our buttons.
It is a distraction exercise – the number of boat people was about 45,000 last year, a figure dwarfed by net immigration of half a million. If the latest £485million bribe to France stops the dinghies, the people-smugglers will simply switch to other means of entry. In any case possibly 90 per cent of those arriving by boat could make what passes for a valid asylum claim, so the ‘crackdown’ is not just PR but an exercise in futility.
The government already plans to deal with the huge backlog of asylum claims by rubber-stamping some via written questionnaires. Campaigners are upset that the form is in English.The good news for these poor chaps is that an army of human rights lawyers funded by Legal Aid will be on hand to help complete the forms; similarly, I suppose the ‘underground railroad’ gangs will work out how to get a piece of the action.
The current official ta-da is a cover for the underlying intention to do absolutely nothing about withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, whose provisions are so easily exploited that virtually anyone claiming asylum can legally settle in this country; not to mention common-or-garden immigration.
If all the Labour Party want is to destroy our social and cultural cohesion (such as it is, and so bloodily forged over centuries) so that a New Jerusalem will arise magically from the ashes, they must have tears of joy in their eyes. Already…
Out of the 59.6million usual residents in England and Wales in 2021, 10million (16.8 per cent or about one in six) were born outside the UK. That figure of ten million won’t include their subsequently-born children, or the second or third generation descendants of earlier immigrants.
Is that a bad thing? Officially, not. The Government’s ‘New Plan For Immigration’, issued a year ago, opens with fine-sounding sentiments:
‘The UK has a proud history of being open to the world. Global Britain will continue in that tradition. Our society is enriched by legal immigration. We are a better country for it. We recognise the contribution of those who have come to the UK lawfully and helped build our public services, businesses, culture and communities and we always will.’
All very dreamy-eyed and Holy Joe. The trouble is, the lack of discrimination – in its strict meaning.
If they were all like my late next-door neighbour, a Ugandan Asian refugee from the monstrous rule of Idi Amin, no problem: he was a very decent, hardworking man who brought up a good family here; his children started enterprises and are prospering. In fact we have the good fortune to live in an area that is becoming an enclave for aspirant Asians; the children of the taxi-drivers will study at school to do better than their dad and become pharmacists, doctors, lawyers, accountants and business owners.
But there are others . . .
While asylum claimants are assessed, they are not allowed to work – besides, there are not many well-paid jobs any more, an economic squeeze is on. What will they do? Often they come from societies that think and behave in very different ways from ours. If they wish to avoid a life on the dole or benefits-subsidised broom-pushing, it will be too easy to slip into organised crime, swindling and various forms of sectarianism.
And the Conservatives will conserve nothing. There is plenty for white-collar looters to fill their boots with while the system falls apart.
If David Baddiel, part of the ‘luvviebubble’ who just know that anything from the Conservatives cometh of the Devil, understood what Rishi and Braverman are doing – taking us for a ride – he might be cheering, not jeering. But if he understood the consequences?
