Immigration

Thursday

Rod Liddle

My poster girl for free speech

Now is the time of year to take down the Christmas decorations from your front window and put up, in their place, the anti-immigration posters. Please display them prominently and make sure the message on each is suitably strident. It behoves all of us to do this, as quickly as possible, even — perhaps especially — if we are liberally minded. For this is not about immigration, per se. It is to show solidarity with Ms Anne Maple, who is aged 61 and unfortunate enough to live in Lewisham. I do not know Ms Maple personally. It may well be that, rather than a sainted individual, she is a meddlesome

Thursday

John Osullivan

Populism vs post-democracy

Europeans are usually alarmed or sniffy about American concern for democracy’s fate, but this time liberal opinion on both sides of the pond sings in unison: populism is a threat to democracy. A recent issue of the Journal of Democracy (a sober publication published by America’s National Endowment for Democracy) provided a handy compendium of all the parties, policies and histories that can be included in the vast cabin-trunk of populism. A lead article by Takis S. Pappas, a Greek political theorist living in Hungary, lists 22 different parties he cautiously calls ‘challengers to liberal democracy’. He breaks them down into three categories: anti-democrats, nativists and populists. (All are commonly

Thursday

Matthew Parris & Matt Ridley

Unforgiven

Now that almost six months have passed since the EU referendum, might it be time for old enemies to find common ground? Matthew Parris and Matt Ridley, two of the most eloquent voices on either side of the campaign, meet in the offices of The Spectator to find out.   MATTHEW PARRIS: Catastrophe has not engulfed us yet, it’s true. But I feel worse since the result, rather than better. I thought that, as in all hard-fought campaigns, you get terribly wound up and depressed when you lose. Then you pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again. But my animosities — not just towards the Brexit

Patrick West

The mystery of Kent’s disappearing Polish shops

Outside of London, the area in Britain that has seen the greatest settlement of eastern Europeans since 2004 has been Kent, for obvious geographical reasons. And to cater for their needs and provide creature comforts, a multitude of shops sprang up in the years that ensued. But a strange thing has started to happen here in east Kent: all the Polish and Baltic shops are starting to close down. This struck me during a visit to Canterbury last week, when I noticed that the premises of the ‘East European Food’ store in Burgate Lane has now been vacated and lays empty. This represents a trend. The Polka Shop in Bench

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A year of revolution

Few years will live as long in the memory as 2016. Historians will ponder the meaning and consequences of the past 12 months for decades to come. In the future, 180-odd years from now, some Zhou Enlai will remark that ‘it is too soon to say’ when asked about the significance of Brexit. The referendum result shocked Westminster. Michael Gove was so sure it would be Remain that he had retreated to bed on the evening of 23 June and only found out Leave had won when one of his aides telephoned in the early hours of the morning. Theresa May admits in her interview with us on p. 26 that

Tim Shipman

Brexit’s breaking points

Trying to write the first draft of history on the EU referendum and the leader-ship mess that followed had both its dramatic and its comic elements. My phone never stopped ringing with Eurosceptics keen to tell me why their contribution to a meeting that had previously escaped my notice was the decisive factor in securing victory. But when a vote is so close — 52 per cent to 48 per cent — then it would not have taken much to push the result the other way. Donald Trump’s victory adds some credence to the idea that Brexit was pre–ordained, part of a wave of history. But the campaign turned on

Wednesday

Ed West

‘British values’ are a load of old codswallop

Sometimes a combination of news stories crop up that so perfectly sum up the spirit of the age, its absurdities and hypocrisies, that there ought to be a name for it. This week, for instance, I learned that the Home Office had barred three Iraqi and Syrian bishops from entering the country, the same department that quite merrily welcomes some of the most unpleasant hate preachers from the Islamic world. Elsewhere, there was also a report about racial and religious segregation in schools and the need to teach something called ‘British values’ to children to help them integrate. And finally, the winner of the country’s most prestigious art award was announced, beating competition from

Thursday

Andrew Green

Where are the government going on immigration?

Today’s net migration figures are still at their record level of just over a third of a million a year. This reinforces the need for the government to approach the forthcoming Brexit negotiations with a clear set of objectives. EU migration is now running at 190,000 a year and accounts for half of total non-British net migration. The referendum made all too clear that the British public want to see EU migration substantially reduced. Furthermore recent polling finds that more than half of Remain voters agree. Brexit is an opportunity that must not be missed. That is why we have published a clear set of UK objectives on immigration. We

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Immigration reaches record high – but what does that really tell us about Brexit Britain?

How much do the net migration figures mean these days? The Office for National Statistics released its latest migration estimates today, which put immigration to the UK in the year to June 2016 at a record high of 650,000 – up 11,000 on the previous year. Net migration was at 335,000. That figure comprises 189,000 EU citizens and 196,000 non-EU citizens who came to Britain, and 49,000 Brits who left this country. But these figures mostly cover the period before the EU referendum. The ONS includes three months of data following June’s vote in today’s release. And the estimates for the year that follows will also reflect Britain’s current immigration

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s Matt Damon problem

One of the crueller caricatures in the 2004 satirical film ‘Team America: World Police’ is a little puppet of Matt Damon who is only able to say ‘Matt Damon’ in a rather feeble and pointless fashion. The actor himself felt he was being cruelly parodied because of his opposition to the Iraq War, and was ‘bewildered’ by the suggestion that he was barely able to say his own name when he was able to learn entire scripts. But the point from the screenwriters seemed to be that beyond his own name, Damon wasn’t really offering anything to the debate about the war. Labour has a Matt Damon problem on immigration

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Stephen Kinnock grilled on Labour’s immigration policy on Today

After Ukip’s new leader Paul Nuttall said he planned ‘to replace the Labour party and make Ukip the patriotic voice of working people’, Jeremy Corbyn’s party are under pressure to re-connect with their traditional working class voters. With that in mind, Stephen Kinnock appeared on the Today programme on Tuesday to talk Labour and immigration. In an interview with Sarah Montague, the Labour MP — and the son of Neil Kinnock — began by conceding that his party had made ‘the huge error of failing to talk enough about immigration’ and have therefore allowed Ukip to ‘step into that place’. So, what is Labour’s plan of action? While Kinnock tried to lay

Thursday

Taki

High life | 10 November 2016

 New York Americans have been to the polls. Everything is over but the shouting — by the loser, that is: honest Hil. I predicted that the best Trump could have hoped for was winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College but I got it wrong: the Donald has triumphed. An underfunded campaign — he spent barely half of what she did — with a skeletal crew and without the party’s full backing won out because not all of America agrees with the values of Jay Z, Beyoncé, Springsteen, Hollywood in general and gay marriage in particular. Trump appealed to those who have been snubbed, the great ignored. They

Monday

The Spectator

Theresa May’s passage to India

When a Prime Minister flies off abroad with a few business-leaders it is seldom worthy of comment. Such trade missions tend to achieve little, beyond generating headlines intended to flaunt politicians’ pro-business credentials. But with the impending departure of Britain from the European Union,-Theresa May’s visit to India this week, accompanied by Sir James Dyson and others, has huge significance. For the first time in four decades, a British Prime Minister can discuss doing trade deals — something which we have until now been forced to contract out to officials in Brussels. Mrs May chose her destination shrewdly. With its rapidly expanding economy and the gradual liberalisation of economic policy, India

Thursday

Mark Palmer

Bordering on insanity | 3 November 2016

There are lots of signs at Gatwick about how it is unacceptable to be ‘rude or abusive’ to Border Force staff. One poster warns that losing your temper or gesticulating in a threatening manner could be a criminal offence. Keep a lid on it, is the-message. My wife Joanna and I recently had plenty of time to study these missives and just about kept a lid on it after returning from a weekend in Spain. It was a Monday evening that became a Monday night at Gatwick’s north terminal as thousands of travellers snaked back and forth for nearly an hour at passport control in an atmosphere that swung from

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Diary – 27 October 2016

I have never met Donald Trump, but I knew his parents. A fact that makes me feel about 100 years old. Which was actually nearer the age Fred and Mary Anne Trump were when, as a teenager, I made my first trip to New York. I remember riding backwards in their limousine on the way to lunch with the extended Trump clan and the lovely Mary Anne apologising that her son Donald would not be joining us. ‘You know about Donald?’ she inquired. I nodded, and recall her adding rather wistfully, ‘He’s always been the outgoing one.’ One of the great pleasures of life, I now realise — and a

The Spectator

Barometer | 27 October 2016

Folio society A new collection of Shakespeare’s work credits Christopher Marlowe as co-author of the three Henry VI plays. Some other candidates claimed to have written Shakespeare plays: FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626). His poems are said to share a similar structure. But lacks motive to use Shakespeare as a pen name. WILLIAM STANLEY, 6th EARL OF DERBY (1561-1642): A Jesuit spy claimed he was secretly writing plays. EDWARD DE WERE, 17th EARL OF OXFORD (1550-1604): Theatre patron said to have used pen name because an aristocrat could not take credit for public plays. Dead for the last 12 years of Shakespeare’s life. ROGER MANNERS 5th EARL OF RUTLAND. Said to have

Thursday

Taki

High life | 13 October 2016

New York   This is a good time to be in Manhattan, the weather’s perfect, the park and foliage still green, and daylight savings time keeps the days long. New York used to be able to build these beautiful cities within a city, like the Rockefeller Center, but that’s all in the past. The developers have got to the politicians and now have free rein. The city had an opportunity after 9/11 to make a 21st century Rockefeller Center downtown, but a shark by the name of Silverstein preferred profit to architectural achievement, as did another horror, Aby Rosen, who is busy turning uptown ugly. I’ve been walking up and

The Spectator

Barometer | 13 October 2016

Fears of a clown Professional clowns complained that the current craze for scaring people by dressing in clown outfits was damaging their trade. But why do some people find clowns frightening? — The effect was analysed in 1970 by Japanese professor Masahiro Mori as he researched robot faces. He found that the more lifelike faces induced increasing feelings of empathy until a critical point, at which point people began to find them scary. Then, as the face was made still more lifelike, empathy quickly returned. He called the effect the ‘uncanny valley’, after its shape on a graph. — Clown faces occupy a gap between primate and human, so the

The Spectator

Universities challenged

On the face of it, this year’s Nobel Prize awards have been a triumph for British scientists. No fewer than five laureates come from these shores: three physicists, one chemist and an economist. But before anyone starts praising our higher education system, there is one small snag: all five are currently working at US universities. David Thouless, who was awarded half the Physics prize, has followed a typical career path. After taking a degree at Cambridge, he took a PhD at Cornell University and a postdoc at the University of California before heading back to Britain, where he worked for 13 years at the University of Birmingham. There, he started

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Tory Theresa is Blue Labour at heart

I never really agreed with the central-thesis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — that ‘42’ is the answer to life, the universe and everything. I have no great animus against the number — it does its job, filling that yawning gap between 41 and 43. But I had never thought it actually-special until the beginning of this week. That’s when I read that the Conservative Party was 17 points ahead in the latest opinion polls, on 42 per cent. A remarkable figure. I suppose you can argue that it says more about the current state of the Labour party than it does about Theresa May’s stewardship of the country.