Immigration

Do we really want restriction on German immigration?

At my nearest library recently there was an art exhibition featuring the works of local school children on the subject of ‘unity’, with lots of drawings (many of them outstandingly good) emphasising how we’re all the same (and yet diverse) and that what we have in common is far more important than anything that divides us. We are totally, totally united. Because I’m a terrible person, there was once a time when this sort of thing would have caused me to break out in an involuntary sneer – except that this was just after the Manchester bombing and one of the schools involved was my kids’, and it just made

The Merkel supremacy

 Berlin Under the PR system we gave them, it’s inevitable that Merkel will have to govern in some sort of coalition ‘Capitalism is armed robbery,’ reads the graffiti on the subway wall, but here in Berlin, German capitalists are doing what capitalism does best — creating new jobs and new industries. Berlin used to be regarded as ‘poor but sexy’(as Berlin’s former mayor Klaus Wowereit put it), but last year the German capital boasted the highest growth in the country — 2.7 per cent, 0.7 per cent above the national average. A city of squats and bombsites has become a city of high-tech start-ups, and now tech giants such as

Debunking the ‘Brexodus’ myth

A new word has entered the lexicon – Brexodus – to reflect the claim that Europeans are leaving in droves as they shun post-Brexit Britain. But it is a funny sort of Brexodus which leaves the number of European nationals in Britain at an all-time high. While the quarterly immigration figures did show a significant reduction in the scale of EU immigration to the UK, and a rise in the number of Europeans departing, those figures also showed that twice as many Europeans came to the UK as departed from it, with an estimated 122,000 EU nationals leaving the UK while 249,000 arrived in the year to March 2017. There have

Passage from India

It is not fashionable to feel sympathy for the men and women who lived and served in the British colonies and who had to leave when independence came, whether it was from Kenya, Ghana — or from India, which celebrated the 70th anniversary of its freedom earlier this month. But I do, because I remember the pain and the loss and the homesickness of leaving India — a feeling which has niggled away somewhere deep down all my life. The Indian writer Shrabani Basu (the film based on her book Victoria & Abdul comes out next month) is no friend of the Raj, but she read my recent memoir and

The Left don’t mind hating immigrants – so long as they’re rich

It seems a long time ago that Jeremy Corbyn made an impassioned defence of immigration from both within and outside the EU, telling his party that: ‘Migrants that have come to this country make an enormous contribution to it. Our conference understands that and Tom Watson put that case very well about the work that migrants have done in the NHS and education and other industries … we should live with that but also understand the number of British people.’ That was last September, yet it seems to sit ill at ease with what he told Andrew Marr recently, that under his rule: ‘What there wouldn’t be is the wholesale

The confusion over immigration shows the government is being pulled in three directions

Another day, another mixed message from the government over its position on Brexit. This time it’s immigration that has become the source of confusion after the Home Secretary and her minister appeared to come up with conflicting lines this morning. In an article for the Financial Times, Amber Rudd said she wanted to reassure businesses and EU nationals that ‘we will ensure there is no “cliff edge” once we leave the bloc’. To do this, she said the flow of EU workers would continue for an ‘implementation period’ after Britain’s exit. However, speaking on the Today programme, Brandon Lewis – the Home Office minister – appeared to take a more

Why Priti Patel is wrong about overseas aid and immigration

The Empire for International Development has a tough job justifying its deeply unpopular budget. In recent years, it has made out that development aid will stem the flow of migration. The following line appears in a piece that Priti Patel, the DFID Secretary, writes for the Sunday Telegraph today. We are taking immediate steps to protect our borders and tackle people smuggling. But the only way to resolve this crisis in the long term is to address the root causes. We need to create jobs across Africa and provide its growing population with a route out of poverty where they are. Her overall point – about how Africa needs more capitalism – is brave and

The public vs the politicians

These are difficult times across Europe. From the endless iterations of the eurozone crisis to the Brexit negotiations beginning in earnest — these and many more challenges will face our continent for years to come. But underneath them all, lies a whole set of other ructions: subterranean events which lead to subterranean public concerns and subterranean public discussions. Foremost among such deep rumblings are the anxieties of the European publics on matters to do with immigration, identity and Islam. These things are closely connected (so closely that I recently put them together in the subtitle of my book, The Strange Death of Europe), but they are unarguably stifled discussions. While

Unemployment is at its lowest since 1975. Can someone tell the Tories?

British government may not be strong and stable but the economy is still the most formidable job creating machine in Europe. And while it’s certainly true that much of the rise in employment is down to immigration, British unemployment is also down – figures today show the lowest level since 1975. My old friend Simon Nixon writes in the Times today about Britain becoming the new basket case of Europe, and has been making similar noises since the Brexit vote. He may well he right, but so far this basket is carrying more jobs than at any time in history. Don’t expect the Tories to make this point: they’ve been out

Libya’s best hope

We were in a detention centre for migrants in Tripoli and we came to a big locked door. It was impressively bolted and padlocked. Someone murmured that we didn’t have time to look inside. But I felt somehow obliged to do so. Outside in the sun I had already said hello to about 100 migrants — almost all of them from West Africa: Guinea-Conakry and Nigeria. They were sitting on the concrete in rows, their heads in their hands; the men in one group, and about half a dozen women a little way off. They had been here for months, in some cases, and they wanted to go home. Kwasi

Nigel Farage will always have more power outside Parliament

It’s easy to mock Nigel Farage over his decision to turn down an ‘easy win’ in Clacton or some other Westminster constituency in preference for the hard graft of the European Parliament and its excruciating regime of expenses and allowances. Easy, but quite likely wrong.  Whether or not he ever sets foot in Parliament, Farage can already claim to have changed British history. His role in the Brexit referendum result is debateable; his role in bringing about that referendum isn’t.   Just in case the story needs retelling, Farage did it by forming a connection between two issues: Europe and immigration. Until that linkage was made, Ukip was an ignorable

What the papers say: How Project Fear failed to materialise

Exactly a year ago today, George Osborne was busy unveiling the Treasury’s famously doom-laden analysis about Brexit. Now with his six jobs and bulging bank balance the former chancellor is busier than ever. But the worries he spoke of about economic uncertainty have failed to materialise, and the prophecies of misery foretold by Project Fear are nowhere to be seen. The Daily Mail says the Treasury document ‘formed the centrepiece of Project Fear and deployed a barrage of apocalyptic forecasts’ about what would happen if Britain voted Leave. In reality, the paper says, only one in ten of Osborne’s predictions have come true – and the ‘the worst ones have

The Spectator’s Notes | 6 April 2017

Cadbury and the National Trust stand accused of taking the Easter out of Easter eggs. The Trust’s ‘Easter Egg Trail’ is now renamed the ‘Cadbury Egg Hunt’. My little theory about the National Trust is that all its current woes result from the tyranny of success: it has become so attached to ever-growing membership (now more than four million) that everything is skewed to this and the original purposes are neglected. No doubt the substitution of the word ‘Easter’ by the word ‘Cadbury’ seemed a small price to pay for big sponsorship. This decision is a symptom of the Trust’s problem. But for the fate of Easter itself, one need not

High life | 9 March 2017

A lousy fortnight if ever there was one. Two great friends, Lord Belhaven and Stenton and Aleko Goulandris, had their 90th birthday celebrations, and I missed both shindigs because of this damn bug. Lord Belhaven’s was in London, at the Polish Club, but flying there was verboten. Robin Belhaven is an old Etonian, served as an officer in Northern Ireland, farmed in Scotland, and has four children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He spent 35 years in the House of Lords when that institution was a responsible arm of the government and not a cesspool full of smarmy lawyers. His wife Malgosia is Polish-born and never fails to stand up

What the papers say: Could free movement from the EU end next month?

‘Take back control’ was the mantra of the Brexit bunch during the referendum – but eight months on, Britain is still waiting to be handed the keys. Next month, says the Daily Telegraph, part of the wait could be over. The paper reports that Theresa May is planning to announce an end to free movement for EU migrants when she triggers Article 50 in March. If this is true, we should celebrate the Prime Minister’s decisiveness, the paper says, hailing the plan as both legal – given that it ‘will only take effect after Brexit’ – and ‘sensible’ – to avoid a rush of migrants coming to Britain before the door slams shut.

High life | 23 February 2017

From my chalet high up above the village, I look up at the immense, glistening mountain range of the Alps, and my spirit soars. Even youthful memories receding into sepia cannot bring me down from the high. Mountains, more than seas, can be exhilarating for the soul. Then I open the newspapers and the downer is as swift as the onset of an Alpine blizzard. Television is even more of a bummer. Last week I saw Piers Morgan tell an American TV personality — a big-time Trump hater — whose face looks exactly like a penis how strange he found it that two people like Bush and Blair, who lied

Ed West

Brexit isn’t to blame for the Polish exodus

I guess the hate crime epidemic that gripped Britain after Brexit hasn’t put that many people off, with new figures showing net migration of 273,000 in the three months to September 2016. That represents a decline of 49,000, of which 12,000 is due to an increase in eastern Europeans heading home (39,000, as opposed to 27,000 the previous year), which I imagine is less to do with any hostile atmosphere in Britain than the booming economy in Poland. No doubt that’s the way it will be presented, though – ‘Poles fleeing the Brexit terror’. In my view, the Government is doing a lot of things wrong at the moment, chiefly

What the papers say: The good and bad news about Britain’s booming jobs market

More Brits then ever are now in work, with the proportion of the working age population in jobs hitting 74.6 per cent at the end of 2016. Good news such as this about Britain’s job market has become ‘almost mundane’, says the Daily Telegraph. But even in this climate of healthy jobs figures, these latest numbers are worthy of attention. For the Telegraph, this is a ‘vivid reminder that Britain’s flexible labour market has weathered all the recent storms’. Talk about joblessness and unemployment used to dominate the headlines. But no more; ‘the conversation’ now is more ‘about the nature of those jobs’. Talk of the ‘gig economy’ in particular

Trump may lose this legal battle – but he can still win the political war

Donald Trump now looks the weakest US president of recent times. His approval rating is historically low for a new Commander-in-Chief. And the 9th District Court of Appeals has now refused to reinstate his executive order on immigration — an order which, if you stop breathing in all the media hot air surrounding it, isn’t all that dramatic a presidential move. The immigration order now seems likely to go up to the Supreme Court — Trump, typically,  tweeted ‘see you in court’ after learning of the decision. He could win there, especially if his administration can get their Supreme Court nominee Judge Gorsuch in place quickly. But the delay will make

Shock horror! Many Europeans agree with Trump on Muslim immigration

Well, now… would you just look at this. I’d read it here if I were you because I suspect it won’t be covered on the BBC News tonight. A large majority of Europeans are in total agreement with Donald Trump in his restriction upon immigrants from Muslim countries. Here are the figures. Now, never mind what I think. And for that matter, never mind what you think. Simply accept that the shrieking at Trump and from that idiotic, jumped-up thick-as-mince dwarf, Bercow, weighing in with his two pennorthworth, is a million miles from how the majority of people in our continent view the matter. Again, this is not about my point