The children of migrants are just as British as anyone else

I long ago accepted that the Conservative party has lost its mind on immigration but until recently I still hoped it retained its decency. Alas, such charity seems ever more sorely misplaced.

Responding to a question from Andrew Green, the MigrationWatch campaigner inexplicably elevated to the peerage by David Cameron, in the upper house yesterday, Lord Bates, a Home Office Minister, suggested immigration needs to be further restricted because too many foreign-born women residing in Britain are having babies. Damn their ovaries, damn it.

This is a remarkable thing to say. Not the least because it suggests the government – or at least Lord Bates – agrees with Lord Green who commented that “The impact of migration is not only the migrants themselves but their very high birth-rate, which will play out in the future”.

Whatever else this may be – and it is plenty of other things – this is hardly subtle. But then rancidness rarely is.