Web exclusive debate report: ‘Immigration: Enough is Enough’

The Spectator recently held a debate at the Royal Geographic Society with the motion ‘Immigration: Enough is Enough’. Proposing it were Frank Field MP, Dominic Raab MP and Kiran Bali MBE JP. Opposing were Oliver Kamm, Jenni Russell and David Aaronovitch. Andrew Neil chaired. Here is Lloyd Evans’ review:

‘I’m a coward,’ admitted Frank Field, the Birkenhead MP, proposing the motion. For years, his Labour party membership had prevented him from speaking out about immigration. ‘But when we had huge numbers coming in from eastern Europe, I knew it was safe to move.’ Primarily this is an English issue because, ‘for reasons I can’t fathom,’ migrants tend to shun Wales and Scotland. Current migration levels have made England, along with Holland, the most crowded nation in Europe. ‘This raises, in an acute form, the question of what it means to be English’. The present ‘mess’ has been caused not by politicians but by ‘the collapse of public ideology.’