Theresa May’s Immigration Bill is another contemptible piece of legislation

Say this for the government, they are at least consistent. Their contemptible lobbying bill is now followed by their equally contemptible immigration bill. Sometimes you think that if it weren’t for Michael Gove and for the fact that David Cameron isn’t Ed Miliband there’d be few reasons to support this government at all.

And this immigration bill really is contemptible. Politics is often a question of signalling and what this bill signals, alas, is that the government prefers the presumption of guilt to the presumption of innocence. It is a bill that turns ordinary Britons into snitches for central government. A bill that will make life more inconvenient for millions of residents while, almost certainly, achieving few, if any of its aims. A bill, most of all, that sends a message that the United Kingdom is a bitter, paranoid, timorous, small-minded kind of country. The kind of country ruled by the kinds of people who spend their days leaving comments on newspaper websites.