Migration

A poll out this week found that only 41 per cent of those aged 18 to 27 are proud to be British. Frankly I’m surprised the figure is that high. After all, if you add together the immigration of recent decades and the concerted effort to demoralise the population that has gone on, that is exactly the sort of result you would expect. It has been achieved in a remarkably short space of time. In 2004, some 80 per cent of young people in the same age cohort said that they felt proud to be British. So within 20 years we have managed to halve our sense of national self-worth.

I was intending to write one of those ‘Ten tips to change your life’ lists that fill so many column inches at this drab time of year. But I got no further than ‘Buy bigger trousers’. Instead, I’ll tackle some of the obvious questions you might be asking as you watch snow turn to slush and wait for the boiler repair bloke to answer his phone. Can I cheer you up? Let’s see. First, will 2025 be a good year to buy a new home (a decision that should always be taken on at least a five-year time horizon)? Pundits see house prices going up (and mortgage rates eventually coming

Doctor’s note Sir: Your leading article ‘Labour vs labour’ (21 September) follows a recent theme that I have noticed in The Spectator, in which the government is criticised for allowing public pay rises without implementing changes to working practices to increase productivity. I cannot comment on other sectors but I work in the NHS, working closely with junior doctors as colleagues and am involved in training them. Your article appears to imply that if they worked harder or differently, productivity would improve. While I accept that NHS productivity may not have improved (or may have worsened over recent years), my experience as a GP and trainer is that my productivity

For British taxpayers perturbed by their £6 million daily bill for housing asylum seekers in hotels, New York City mayor Eric Adams has the solution: handbills. Exasperated by a sudden influx he characterises as a ‘disaster’, Adams plans to dispense police-tape yellow flyers both at the city’s 188 sites for housing migrants and at America’s overrun, purely notional southern border. The leaflets warn in English and Spanish: ‘Since April 2022, over 90,000 migrants have come to New York City. There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals. Housing in NYC is very expensive. The cost of food, transportation, and other necessities is

The Illegal Migration Bill is having a distorting effect on the Tory party. It has put Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith together on the side of liberal opinion – and Ken Clarke on the side of the Prime Minister. This week, May and Duncan Smith sought to stop the government from overturning a Lords amendment which would prevent the deportation of those claiming to be victims of people-trafficking. Rishi Sunak thinks that loopholes in the law have been exploited by people-traffickers. May and Duncan Smith disagree. It fell to Clarke, a fierce critic of the government since Brexit, to challenge the plan’s opponents to come up with a better