France’s failure to tackle migration is a warning to the Tories

Perhaps the most illuminating comment made by Nigel Farage during his discussion with Fraser Nelson on Spectator TV earlier this month was when he reflected on the Brexit campaign. ‘I remember being told, by [Daniel] Hannan and Boris Johnson, “no, no, don’t discuss immigration in the referendum”,’ reminisced the former leader of UKIP. ‘”We’ll lose the referendum. Some of our very posh friends don’t like this sort of thing”.’ 

It’s not just posh Tories who blanch at the mention of the ‘I’ word; so do posh socialists, which explains why immigration is now out of control in the UK. The vast majority of MPs, if not all strictly ‘posh’, certainly hail from the middle-class graduate class. A decade ago the Financial Times reported that 90 per cent of the House of Commons attended university, which for 30 per cent meant Oxford or Cambridge. 

This transformation has been a long time in the making; in 1951, 37 per cent of Labour MPs were working class, a figure that had fallen to 13 by 1997.