Everything in life is relative. If you are vastly overweight and stuff one hundred cakes into your chops daily, reducing it to 75 is, by some measure, progress. You'll still, however, be getting more rotund by the day.
This is, sadly, how news of Sir Leader Starmer's terribly drastic immigration reforms must be seen, which promise to reduce immigration by around 100,000 a year.
That kind of cut might be welcome were we not amid the insane demographic experiment being conducted in Western Europe. Close to one million souls come to the decreasingly United Kingdom each year. As such, one hundred thousand is neither here nor there.
Not, of course, that immigration is purely a question of numbers as an astute piece in The Spectator notes. Were 100,000 highly talented individuals – who were keen as mustard to integrate fully – to legally land on our shores it is doubtful many would stand in the way.
When, however, they come to variously work as delivery drivers after taking a useless degree at one of our many fourth-rate providers of tertiary education, availing themselves of the various bounties offered by our ludicrous welfare state, it is an altogether less attractive proposition. This is compounded only further by their part reluctance, part open hostility towards integrating, instead demanding that the country accommodate their foreign mores.
There much to say about the proposals, little positive. Naturally, it only targets legal immigration and leaves the giant festering wound of illegal migration untouched. Each day hundreds pour into our country, forming an ever-growing class of turbo benefit scroungers who, in any sane country, would be booted out as soon as they crossed into British territorial waters.
Language requirements will be enhanced, from a roughly GCSE level to A-Level. Stats in the White Paper suggest that over 50% of recent migrants' dependants have a low proficiency of English, and that 40% of low skilled immigrant labour arriving into this country cannot speak English well or at all. It's clearly a start but, realistically, nobody should be here for any duration of time unless they speak fluent English. If, after five years, you have not bothered to get to grips with our Anglo-Saxon tongue, then sod off.
Not that a language makes the culture. Every Tom, Dick or Harry (if only) can speak a bit of English. How about we make sure that they're not inclined to place women in burkhas, have a penchant for crime or would partake in a spot of industrial-scale rape? No doubt a test on British Values™ will ensure that they are just as English or you or me.
Yet the language used by Sir Leader Keir was telling. He claimed that this alleged tightening up of the immigration system was necessary as 'rules shape our values', and that they 'guide us towards our rights and responsibilities'.
I rather think he has it back-to-front. Our values have shaped our rules, not vice-versa. It is why any old country can have a constitution that is worth less than the paper it is written on: without the people to enforce its contents – that is, those whose morality align with it – it is meaningless. Every tyrannical hellhole under the sun has had sweet platitudes in its governing documents, but precious few have nurtured, over centuries, the mindset that will ensure their enforcement.
It is odd that a self-proclaimed 'proud Englishman' such as Keir would not recognise this. Elsewhere, whilst presenting this new White Paper, Sir Keir said that the UK faced the prospect of becoming an island of strangers.
A stroll through any town or city – and increasingly village – in the UK will quickly rob even the most happily blind citizen of the illusion that that risk lies on the horizon. For those of us who regard Britain as anything more than a geographic designation, it has long been clear that fragmentation has occurred.
As with any government measure, this is all a few decades too late. Not that it will make a substantial difference anyway: there is little in the policy proposal that indicates that immigration will be substantially reduced. The validity of post-graduate visas will be reduced from 24 to 18 months (so what?). The length of time required to get Indefinite Leave to Remain extended from five to 10 years (albeit only in some cases).
Other than that, not a lot. Perhaps some fairy dust and crossed fingers will make it come true. As the Paper itself states, we don't have any idea how many people are in the country anyway, so assessing whether it works or not is seemingly impossible as well.
All very nice and attempt to stave away Reform UK. Smart money is on it doing nothing at all to stop the never-ending wave of immigration.
But at least it signals that the Overton Window – aka the scope of permissible ideas and policies – is shifting in our favour. Elsewhere more radical demands are rearing their heads like unhappy meerkats with furrowed brows. The people are fed up and, increasingly, they're unafraid to say it.
There are going to be a lot of hard truths to face in the near future: the kind of stuff proposed yesterday doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.
Frederic Edward
A Last Bastion Of Sanity
https://frederickedward.substack.com/