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All this banging on about people coming across the Channel in small boats and illegal migration more generally is a side show (and, I suspect, cynically used as a distraction). The point is the huge amount of LEGAL migration. But it’s obvious from what many people say and leave in comments on social media that they conflate the two.

It would be nice to see the figures excluding students. I don’t see how people can complain about people coming on student visas (as long as the courses are genuine and the degrees of value). Britain earns billions from educating people from abroad.

However, other than for students and the very highly skilled, there need to be huge cuts in legal migration, plus we need to do what we humanely can about the far smaller number of illegal migrants. I’m a liberal and personally deeply relaxed about immigration, but it’s a very minority view. Liberals and the various types of ‘left’ are deluding themselves if they think they can simply explain to people why we need high net migration. This is a sure vote loser. If we want social democracy to survive, immigration must be massively cut and it needs to be proven that it was Labour wot done it.

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Yup as Trump's reelection proved

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Ever heard of people, notably students, over-staying on their visas ?

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Yes. That’s why we need ID cards. If we can’t count, we can’t manage.

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I have long wondered what the impact would have been in 2016 if an astroturf group had been set up, that the official Remain campaign would have obviously disavowed, who’s sole message in the run to the referendum would have been something like ‘once we lose the EU migrants , they will have to be replaced with Africans and Arabs”

They would have been condemned by Remainers (while getting secretly funded by Remain supporters, with all their advertising on social media) the Faragists and Cummings wouldn’t have been able to help themselves going against them, thus increasing their reach and you could have had a racist Remain vote. In a 52-48 referendum it could have made the difference

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What I find so bizarre is in private remain politicians make this point but they never say so in public!!!

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I think the fear of being called racist that you mention in your piece explains it

What if doesn’t explain is why they didn’t outsource that messaging to a group they could claim distance from

I guess the one worry with pushing that in the referendum would have been the Asian and Muslim vote thinking ‘I should vote leave as they’ll give us more family unification visas’

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Our geopolitical priority is Europe.

It isn't hard to explain really.

Infact.. minding our responsibilities regarding the European mainland is honouring the sacrifice of many an Asian or African.

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We keep getting told that Inflation is why incumbents have been getting hammered all year, well that’s where you start on defending migration, you explain the impact a cut in migration would have on prices. Now you’ll get some mendacious types like Ed West (amazingly I just blanked on his name so tried to describe him to ChatGPT and it spat out Douglas Murray, so I wrote ‘not him, he tries to come off as reasonable’ and it immediately said Ed West 😳) who will run the line he’s been running lately that the inflation hit it worth it and people will like the higher wages, thus after he spent 18 months refusing to give Biden credit for low wage earners getting above inflation pay increases while hammering Biden on Inflation, but as we’ve seen with Biden, that line won’t work, people blame governments for inflation and credit themselves for getting pay rises

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Very good Nick. Of course the EU migrants were also mainly young and single and didn’t bring uncles and grannies. They also went home after scraping together enough to buy a flat in Poznan or wherever. The non EU migrants and their descendants are going to stay, and many of them will swell the Tory voter base, especially Indians and Nigerians. Of course the BBC and MSM don’t dare discuss this.

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Thanks Nick !! I, so far, have not much faith in Labour. Sir K is trying to appease the anti imigration rethoiric of Farage by blaming the last govt of high numbers and then saying they had deported 300 Brazilians. Brazilians, the samba loving, football magicans who know how to prepare grilled beef. I am afraid he is quite a bit away of drilling thick planks on immigration. Unfortuanely he is not only one

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As usual, lots of Labour bashing, whatever they do. Trying to be grown-up about the grave difficulties we are in; immediate cries verging from vile heartless "Tory-lite" to incompetent give-away Lefties. Pick your poison. Plus an unfashionable view, by NOT virtuously supporting a fascist death cult bent on destroying every decent human ideal, distorted to "Genocide"

If you start a war - people, children, tend to die, even if not used as human shields

But I have become a little alarmed, with 3 assimilated immigrant family members, at the numbers who reject so many secular humanist values, happy with a medieval theocracy.

Hard to overstate my revulsion to the ascendant Putin, Trump Farrago mob, winning - a majority of US voters!!! Here next time? If I didn't love my grandchildren, I'd be relieved, even by a possible "goodbye" trip to civilized Switzerland. (Forced by our own medieval adherents)

Yours, in despair - an ancient ex-optimist...

PS Farrago IS worse than TFG - he's not stupid, but very cunning.

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Could a law be written that says anything posted on social media that is algorithmically promoted is considered to have been ‘published’ and thus the social media company and its owner are held liable for what it says the same way newspaper or magazine publishers are

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The enthusiasm of the young for mass-immigration (of which they are the main victims) is bewildering. They are in an opium dream of internationalist optimism.

A dream never realisable, and now doomed to become nightmare.

In fairness, the working-class young don't in general succumb to the dream; education, and a sheltered middle-class background, being as ever breeding grounds of lunacy.

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We need immigrants ?

But not nearly as many as we have.

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Diversity is division, thus collapse, thus a fount of nihilism.

Diversity is a leftist and liberal enthusiasm, and like all such enthusiams, ends in catastrophe.

Migrants must assimilate.

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BTW, there are good reasons for immigration but I don't believe for a moment there are good reasons for 906,000 net immigration per year. It's a completely ridiculous, stratospheric, unsustainable number in not only the long but even the medium term.

Trouble is though the UK is a very, very short term country with an inadequate skills base and a high level of worklessness in the existing labour force .... so the short term fix is writing the visas. So much easier and cheaper, in the short term at least, than investing in productivity and training people up. So here we are.

In other words your point that the current UK model requires high levels of immigration is correct - but it's just one of many things that shows it's a rubbish low investment unsustainable model that needs to change. But that's hard. So it probably won't. So I fear Farage will have the wind behind him for a good while yet.

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Oh I agree it is shocking and unsustainable

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On the other hand.... you could argue increasing non-EU immigration and making it easier is one promise, maybe the only promise, the Convservatives kept.

Remember this in the Referendum campaign for example, courtesy of the FT at the time?:

"Vote Leave woos British Asians with migration leaflets

Out supporters say curbing EU immigrants would ease accessfor Commonwealth citizens

Vote Leave is hoping to secure the backing of British Asians by telling them that if Britain quits the EU, it will mean more immigration from elsewhere in the world.

The official Out campaign is drawing up leaflets aimed at Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu speakers arguing that a British exit from the EU would help to stem the flow of Eastern Europeans into the UK — allowing more incomers from Commonwealth countries to take their place.

Saqib Bhatti, a board member for Vote Leave, said English-language leaflets had been sent out to Muslim voters, while others in different languages were set to follow.....

.... Priti Patel, the employment minister, was appointed by Mr Cameron as Britain’s first “UK Indian diaspora champion”. She is using that platform to undermine the Cameron-led Remain campaign as she attacks the government’s “biased” immigration policy.

“Temples and gurdwaras have difficulties bringing priests in. Our communities struggle to get visas for kabbadi players to come and share their phenomenal sporting talents in this country,” she told India’s Economic Times.

Ms Patel warned this week that curry restaurants were being deprived of high-quality chefs because “uncontrolled immigration” from the EU had led to tighter controls on talented migrants from elsewhere."

Johnson and Patel who fronted this push then went on to draw up the new 'points based system' that has let the numbers rip.

I don't think for a moment they expected the numbers would go as far as they have. But then, no one sane ever thought these two did detail.

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A very good article. There is another issue here worth raising. Why do we need so many skilled workers from abroad? The government need to really get a grip on training which has been a gaping void in policy for years. Too many people encouraged to go to university when vocational training was starved of funds. And why do industries such as construction not train people?

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Another excellent article, as usual. But we don't need any more 'analysis' we need narrative. A narrative to counter the far right, not an analysis of why Labour doesn't have one. What does one say in a few short sentences to counter the fearful stories from the extreme Right? As a Labour canvasser I've got a few but would welcome some more.

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What happened is WHY it happened... if politics is creating the snap back...the over reaction required for political currency.

So the tories are themselves fuel to the fires of rightwing oligarchical power... well that's why they have lasted so long...as a face for wealth and power.

What's so stupid about the immigration debate is that places with high immigration..like London or Oxford... not just high visibility immigration * or seasonal work* like fields in Lincolnshire... are wealthy and rich with things going on. If Britain is successful it will be attractive..and vice versa. Farage..aside from appeasing a genocidal incompetent in Putin... seems to want the UK to be a passive victim full of inaction in global affairs... being in the EU was action that secured Britain's interests.. being out is doing nothing.

The left or centre being caught between accusations of racism or transphobia and sensible policy is a loss of process over style.

Farage is getting so much help... because if it were my job...let me at the ***t!

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The EU is as impotent as Britain.

Both are toast.

Neither can do anything whatever in global affairs.

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I am losing faith in Labour. I am waiting for them to do something. It certainly wasn’t that speech on immigration! Add that to shaking hands with Farage as Peter Oborne pointed out and it worries me. If he doesn’t strike a chord soon it feels like Farage will run roughshod over him too. After all, it was anger at Tories and desperation for change that drove his majority so why doesn’t he use it while he can. He always sounds rehearsed. I had to guess his “strategy” before the GE and I’m still trying to figure him out. As for the left. Who represents them? We’re always talking about Tories and the Far Right, Centre, Centre Left and “hard left”. in politics these days. Why not just traditional Left? Labour doesn’t feel like Labour any more. I’m a traditional Labour Supporter btw. But I voted tactically for LibDems and get to watch Ed Davey doing bungees. Lucky me.

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