Not only has this not happened – despite Cameron’s “no ifs, no buts” pledge at the start of his premiership – but actually, the number revealed today is 16,000 higher than those halcyon days when he and Nick Clegg skipped into Downing Street in 2010.
Since that year, almost all his Cabinet members and just about half his backbenchers have at some point gone on national television, or given quotes to the newspapers, seeking to assure us all that immigration would be down to the “tens of thousands” by the end of this Parliament.
Well now we know that to have been another Tory-led Coalition lie.
Of course, a lot of people don’t see the problem with mass migration. To that I say: ask the police, ask doctors and nurses, ask school headteachers, ask the planners at the Department of Transport – an influx of the type Britain has seen since 2004 is both unprecedented and unsustainable. The country simply was not ready for it, and our national infrastructure is now strained.
The argument in response is always “we didn’t expect that many people”. Well some of us did. Some of us predicted it. The same way we predicted the large number of Romanians and Bulgarians, even though we were derided for it before the start of this year, and called scaremongers and worse.
I get more than my fair share of criticism for being “negative” about this stuff, but I want to assure people I’m not. It’s just hard to be upbeat when you’re constantly lied to by the Government – and lied about by the press, with a number of stories yesterday claiming that “Ukip says” that babies born to migrants should be classed as migrants. No one from Ukip HQ said such a thing.
We would treat the children of migrants the same as those of British citizens. But the children of any incomers inevitably add to the weight on Britain’s public services – and that must be taken into consideration, too, when deciding how many foreigners our government grants licence to stay here. We encourage family life. All we actually want is to make sure this country has the resources to support all the families in it.
I have a feeling, however, that I’m not alone in feeling sick of being lied to. For the avoidance of doubt though: I want to see sensible levels of immigration, not no immigration. I want us to treat the world equally and fairly, not have a discriminatory attitude towards Europe and against places like India, Australia, Canada, Africa, and so on.
I want Britain to prosper, and immigration can be a part of that. But not on this scale, and certainly not this quickly.
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the usually down-to-earth Tory MP Mark Pritchard, who I like a lot by the way, and who appeared opposite me on the BBC’s Daily Politics on Thursday, say that he believed you could both be in the European Union and have control of your borders. The point I was making, that you manifestly cannot, is not one of opinion. It is a statement of fact. And yet the Conservatives continue to live in denial of this.
Well so be it. And let Cameron go on television this morning and make more excuses, and claim further victories from a European Union that demands Britain accommodates 260,000 extra people a year, and charges us billions of pounds for the pleasure of it. We’ll continue to tell the truth – and we’ll continue to campaign for a fair, points-based immigration system with a Britain outside the EU. Nigel Farage. The Independent.
