Immigration

Thursday

The Spectator

Who works as a bouncer or security guard?

Farewell, Chagos The government announced that it would hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. There are 13 other British Overseas Territories, only ten of which have a permanent population. The most populated are: Cayman Islands 78,554 Bermuda  62,506 Turks and Caicos 38,191 Gibraltar  33,701 British Virgin Islands 31,758 – Pitcairn Island is the only British Overseas Territory in the Pacific Ocean, which has been integral to the claims that, even now, the sun never sets on the British Empire – even if there is an overlap of just 20 minutes between sunrise in Diego Garcia and Pitcairn Island in June. – With the Chagos Islands gone, the sun

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Liberals are not just stupid – they’re dangerous

We held a small party to celebrate the news that the UK had seen its largest rise in population in 50 years: a jump of 1 per cent in only 12 months to a respectable total of 68.3 million people. Just crisps and soft drinks, you understand. Nothing wildly extravagant. All patriots feel proud of the speed with which our numbers have been rising of late, because naturally we wish for the UK to be the biggest and best in the world – and we are on our way. The rights of the likes of Ardit outweigh the rights of the rest of us not to be burgled At the

Wednesday

Ross Clark

Does Britain really want less immigration?

The economy shrinks quarter by quarter; whole streets of houses in northern towns are abandoned, schools start closing for want of pupils – but there is no shortage of jobs for those who want to work, and traffic on the M25 seems a bit easier. That is a vision of Britain without migration. The headline to the latest population estimates from the Office of National Statistics – which cover the year to the middle of 2023 – is that the number of people living in the United Kingdom swelled by what is a record for modern times. The population grew by 1 per cent, adding an extra 662,400 people –

Roy Foster

How can Ireland survive the seismic changes of the past three decades?

Historians in Ireland occupy a public role – unlike in Britain, where those with an inclination towards the commentariat usually migrate to America. This is perhaps not surprising in a country where public intellectuals are exemplified by Stephen Fry and philosophers by Alain de Botton. Ireland presents a more demanding prospect, where, ever since the days of Conor Cruise O’Brien, historians have colonised the public sphere with influential newspaper columns and regular debates on television. Indeed, when the national TV station began broadcasting in the early 1960s, it featured a discussion programme called The Professors, all of them historians (and one or two usually a bit the worse for wear).

Monday

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Faultless visuals – shame about the play: the National’s Coriolanus reviewed

Weird play, Coriolanus. It’s like a playground fight that spills out into the street and has to be resolved by someone’s mum. The hero is a Roman general whose enemies conspire to banish him so he takes revenge by joining forces with a foreign power and laying siege to Rome. Coriolanus’s mother shows up on the battlefield and begs him to drop his vendetta and come back home. Later he dies but without delivering a big speech. The Roman soldiers have plastic swords that go ‘clack’ rather than metal ones that go ‘ching’ The key difficulty is that Coriolanus’s tragic flaw, a lack of ambition, is really a virtue. He’s

Thursday

The Spectator

How to manage migration like the Swedish

In the end, the German state of Thuringia did not fall into the hands of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The party won the most votes in the recent election but was unable to form a coalition, meaning that Björn Höcke will not be the state’s minister-president. This is ideal for him: he can cry foul, claim to represent the true voice of Germany and point to a conspiracy to keep him out of power. His incendiary strain of politics proved more popular than the more moderate version of the AfD in Saxony, which held elections the same day. These will all be lessons taken into consideration ahead of

Wednesday

Tuesday

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Does Rachel Reeves need an ‘escape route’ on winter fuel?

14 min listen

Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls join James Heale to look ahead to a crucial week for Labour. On Tuesday, Parliament will hold a binding vote on the changes to winter fuel allowance – how are Labour expected to deal with this? Former shadow chancellor Ed Balls, and husband of the current home secretary Yvette Cooper, has argued that Labour need an ‘escape route’ from the policy. What can we read from this intervention? And how influenced are the government by the spectres of George Osborne and Liz Truss? Also on the podcast, Fraser talks about both the problems facing Germany, and the surprisingly successful measure that Sweden has introduced, to

Thursday

Helen Barrett

Never pour scorn on Croydon

‘So f-ing Croydon,’ was the worst insult David Bowie could think of to describe a person or thing that revolted him. ‘Less of a place, more of a punchline,’ was a recent swipe by Sue Perkins, the Croydon-born comedian who grew up at the tail end of the town’s golden era of rampant employment, ambitious cultural venues and well-endowed private schools. London’s outermost, southernmost, most populous borough is an easy target for condescension: too brash, yet too poor; too try-hard, yet too lethargic; too ambitious, yet not ambitious enough. As the Croydonian author John Grindrod has written, locals are accustomed to Croydon’s ‘very existence – our existence – provoking outrage’.

Thursday

Charlotte Eagar

‘I came here to escape radical Islam’: the asylum seekers who understand the rioters’ fears

Sousou is a 24-year-old Syrian-Palestinian woman who arrived in Britain a few weeks ago in a rubber dinghy from Calais. Her husband was also on the boat, along with 70 other men and women. Sousou was (and is) pregnant and the passengers all nearly drowned – as her aunt had done on a previous crossing attempt. There were too many people on board and the overloaded dinghy began to take in water. Sousou and her husband were rescued by the British coastguard and for a while they felt safe – until the riots began. Now, after things seem to have quietened down, she talks to me from a hotel in

Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde

The global fertility crisis is worse than you think

For anyone tempted to try to predict humanity’s future, Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb is a cautionary tale. Feeding on the then popular Malthusian belief that the world was doomed by high birth rates, Ehrlich predicted: ‘In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.’ He came up with drastic solutions, including adding chemicals to drinking water to sterilise the population. Ehrlich, like many others, got it wrong. What he needed to worry about was declining birth rates and population collapse. Nearly 60 years on, many predict the world will soon reproduce at less than the replacement rate. But by my calculations, we’re already there.

Wednesday

Monday

Thursday

The Spectator

After Rwanda: what will Labour do now?

Keir Starmer is advertising for someone to head his newly created Border Security Command. The salary is higher than his own: the person in charge of stopping the boats would earn between £140,000 and £200,000. According to the ad, the job of patrolling the English Channel can be done remotely from any one of 12 cities, including Edinburgh and Belfast. It will require coordination with the Home Office, parts of the navy and even MI5. Never mind that this goes on already, with no discernible effect. The key requirement for the job, it would seem, is to be the fall guy, someone ready to take the blame for a policy

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Don’t bother calling the doctor 

‘If you are calling about sinusitis, sore throat, earache in children, infected inset bite from the UK not overseas, impetigo, shingles, or female-only uncomplicated water infections, speak to your local pharmacist.’ That is how my parents’ GP surgery now answers the phone. A recorded message telling you to go away for almost every illness you might have is read out by a very stern male voice, unnecessarily loudly. He first tells you to dial 999 for life-threatening emergencies, or 111 for anything less serious, leaving you to decide which is which. Then he tells you there are no appointments even if you wait for an answer because so many of

Thursday