The Telegraph newspaper has today followed in the footsteps of its increasingly liberal-left leaning sister publication the Spectator, slamming Home Secretary Theresa May for talking tough on immigration.
Mrs. May is expected to use her speech to the Conservative Party Conference later today to talk about the perils of unchecked, uncontrolled mass migration: a leaf out of UKIP’s book, and what the Telegraph describes as a “cynical” bid for the party’s leadership in a post-David Cameron era.
But right-thinking individuals will notice this is also an attack on her own policies of the past five years.
Attempting to tack right after presiding over an unprecedented rise in immigration – in concurrence with a record high in Britain’s foreign-born population – is foolhardy. It opens her up to massive charges of hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, what used to be a right-wing newspaper, the Telegraph, has slammed her for criticising what its paymasters believe is the best route to cheap, migrant labour:
James Kirkup writes:
It’s hard to know where to start with Theresa May’s awful, ugly, misleading, cynical and irresponsible speech to the Conservative Party conference today.
If you haven’t seen reports of it, allow me to summarise: “Immigrants are stealing your job, making you poorer and ruining your country. Never mind the facts, just feel angry at foreigners. And make me Conservative leader.”
He even cites a government study that he claims undermines the argument over wage compression. (Say it ain’t so… government bureaucrats have found in favour of government policy?!)
But Kirkup and the Telegraph seem to have ignored the evidence from the (slightly more independent) Bank of England, which in May 2015 admitted that migration was contributing to a stagnation in wages.
This was doubled down upon by another official just last month, who said:
“We know, for example, that migration flows have risen significantly over the past fifteen years, and that immigrants are more likely to take low-skilled jobs than UK-born workers.
“So if easier immigration has made the overall supply of labour more responsive to economic conditions in this country… it’s probably done so to a greater extent for low-skilled than high-skilled workers.
“So when the UK economy grows faster than its neighbours, as has been the case over the past couple of years, you’d expect to see greater inward migration and a disproportionate rise in the supply of low-skilled labour in particular.”
And Kirkup goes on: “I’d suggest that Mrs May is wrong and that Britain is actually, after a period of high immigration, a remarkably cohesive and tolerant society, largely and happily free of the nasty and even violent nativism seen in many European countries of late.”
Well, Westminster may be remarkably cohesive and “tolerant” (more on the use of this word, later) but Rotherham is not. Tower Hamlets is not. Vast areas of Luton, Bradford, Cardiff, Leicester, Birmingham, and more… are not.
These are the towns and cities that real people live in, when they don’t live in the confines of Notting Hill or Pimlico, or indeed get the chance to “turn down Oxbridge” as Kirkup (or Jim-Nice-But-Dim as Guido calls him) boasted on the Telegraph in August.
He adds: “I’d also wish that politicians like Mrs May would celebrate that success (and sound like they actually like modern Britain) instead of talking up tensions.”
As if disliking “modern Britain” is disallowed, or taboo, or uncouth.
Well plenty of people do dislike “modern Britain”, and with plenty of good reasons to.
“Change” isn’t always good. “Progress” isn’t always achieved through “progressive” politics. And radical alterations to a nation’s fabric – as per Blair’s Britain – is almost always damaging.
In other words: It’s Britain, Jim. But not as we know it.
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