Immigration’s theatre of the absurd

On the cusp of an almighty row over Trump’s planned mass deportations, let’s look to Europe for light relief.

Last month, the pridefully left-wing management of the storied 19th-century Parisian theatre Gaité Lyrique, owned by the pridefully left-wing Paris council and traditionally the home of operettas, digital arts and musical performances, staged a free conference on ‘reinventing the refugee welcome in France’. The organisers literally invited their own downfall: 200 West African migrants who apparently felt very welcome indeed and refused to leave.

These passionate opera fans have since swelled to 350. The pridefully left-wing management cannot, of course, bring themselves to eject their newly permanent audience, who we presume are hoping to subscribe for a full season. Meanwhile, activists have seized on the ‘anti-racist, anti-colonial’ cause célèbre, shuttling boxes of fruit and vegetables into the venue, though no theatre is set up to function as a soup kitchen. The building’s zero showers and lone pair of toilets dizzy the imagination. When the story was reported, British comments exploded with bitter hilarity: ‘For goodness sake. The theatre is far too small. Bus them all to Versailles and they can invite their friends.’

Although another commenter noted that for Gaité Lyrique this is probably ‘the best show they’ve put on in years’, the spectacle isn’t, alas, proving profitable. All other events have been cancelled. Gaité Lyrique depends on ticket sales and cannot afford to sponsor a ceaseless piece of improvisational performance art that’s free to the public. The pridefully left-wing theatre is not only suffering physical degradation I’m reluctant to picture too vividly, but is struggling to pay 60-some employees. It’s going bankrupt.

Obviously, this fiasco is a metaphor for European immigration more generally. Either by inviting bums on seats or being lax about checking tickets at the door, our pridefully left-wing governments and civil servants have allowed in a rabble of poorly educated visitors from the ‘developing world’ – at a certain point, you have to ask, developing into what? – who aren’t leaving.