Immigration. Were you aware that this has become a bit of a problem these past ten years? I wasn’t, obviously, because like all credulous idiots I get my news from a single trusted source, the BBC, and as a result I’ve known for some time now that immigration is great, regardless of what the facts and figures are.
I know, for example, that all those warnings by evil right-wing MPs about a potential ‘flood’ which might ‘swamp’ Britain were dangerously inflammatory ‘dog-whistle’ politics; that eastern Europeans have a work ethic that puts our native population to shame; that all the cleverest think tanks tell us that immigration represents a boon to our economy; that we are a nation of immigrants and that this is what has made us great; that anyone who thinks otherwise is ‘racist’; and so on.
This week the BBC tried a cunning new variant on this theme called The Truth about Immigration (BBC2, Tuesday). By roping in notionally right-leaning Nick Robinson to present it and by trailing it as some kind of massive volte-face the BBC sought to give the impression that it was saying something new, controversial and daring.
It wasn’t really, though. Sure, there were some sops to reality: interviews with dejected native northerners (including a second-generation Asian), upset by the Roma gangs hanging around on street corners and dumping rubbish everywhere; ex-Labour minister Jack Straw expressing ‘regret’ at the way his administration had underestimated the scale of immigration by a factor of ten; scenes of English people at the New Forest show wondering where their country had gone. Underneath all that distracting surface detail, though, here was the same old BBC feigning a critique of Britain’s disastrous immigration policy but ending up presenting an apologia for it.
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