Quite So.

Michael Deacon.

Starmer’s claim that he’s tackling immigration now looks 

more ridiculous than ever.

Why, Why on earth does the Government think we need to import 

poets and ‘diversity experts’?

Michael DeaconColumnist

15 July 2025 6:00am BST

Why precisely is it that, over the past two decades, the UK has imported so many millions of foreign workers? Supposedly it’s because our country has severe “skills shortages”. Personally, though, I have my doubts. Especially now that this newspaper has unearthed a list of the occupations that immigrants can cite when applying for “skilled work visas”.

And among them, believe it or not, is “poet”.

Now, it may well be true that our country no longer produces great poets of her own. Even so, I’d be surprised if many British employers have been anxiously petitioning Yvette Cooper to allow in more poets from abroad.

“Honestly, Home Secretary, we’d love to hire homegrown poets. Sadly, though, British workers nowadays are just too lazy and entitled to master iambic tetrameter. They’d rather sit at home claiming benefits than get up at 6am to do an honest day’s graft on a villanelle or a rondeau redoublé. That’s why we urgently need to recruit thousands of hard-working young poets from Poland, Pakistan and Somalia. Otherwise, this country’s Petrarchan sonnet industry will collapse.”

Even more surprising, however, is another job on the “skilled visa” list. It’s “diversity and inclusion expert”.

If there is one line of work in which Britain does not face even the faintest hint of a skills shortage, surely to goodness it’s “diversity and inclusion”. Every single year, without fail, our universities turn out hundreds of thousands of expertly brainwashed, virtue-signalling woke ideologues. That’s easily enough to staff the nation’s HR departments. So why on earth should we allow foreigners to come over here and steal these jobs in DEI, when our own deranged Left-wing fanatics could be doing them?

Still, perhaps some good will come of this farce. The middle-class Left may finally turn against mass immigration, now it’s putting their own jobs at risk.

DT.