No country can cope with so much change 

By DAILY MAIL COMMENT

Published: | Updated:

Fully aware that yesterday’s immigration statistics would be disastrous for the Conservatives, the Whitehall machine swung into action to try to ‘bury the bad news’.

How shabbily cynical of the Government to release 16 reports into the Jimmy Savile scandal at the exact moment it was announced by the Office for National Statistics that migration had swollen Britain’s population by 298,000 last year.

But the truth is that no amount of news management could save David Cameron from humiliation after failing so catastrophically to meet his solemn 2010 election pledge to cut net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’.

Immigration: UK Border Agency staff fingerprint and photograph Romanians at Marble Arch in this photo taken in January last year. Net migration has soared despite government promises it would be slashed

Immigration: UK Border Agency staff fingerprint and photograph Romanians at Marble Arch in this photo taken in January last year. Net migration has soared despite government promises it would be slashed

For, far from getting a grip, net migration will end the current Parliament 52,000 higher than the level he inherited from a Labour Party which will go down in history as encouraging an unprecedented influx from overseas.

Worse, the Prime Minister cannot even cling to the defence that his spectacular policy failure is the fault of free movement within the EU, which, of course, he says he plans to reform if – and it’s a very big if – Angela Merkel will let him.

Yes, the great success of Britain’s economy has meant more workers pouring in from Spain, Italy, France and Portugal.

   

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But, worryingly, academics yesterday revealed that Britain’s brightest people seem to be leaving to work overseas, while immigrants with low numeracy skills arrive to take their place.

Significantly, there were 37,000 arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria in the year to September 2014 – just as, to the sneers of the BBC, the Mail predicted.

(Indeed, with 187,000 National Insurance numbers handed out to citizens of these two desperately poor countries last year, 37,000 may be a chronic underestimate).

However, it’s the 190,000 level of net migration from outside the EU – which the Government can control – that is most devastating for Mr Cameron.

Every category of incomer, from foreign students to asylum seekers, was up and – even if EU immigration had not added a single person to our population – he would still have missed his ‘tens of thousands target’ by 90,000!

No wonder party strategist Lynton Crosby has told the Tories not to discuss immigration during the election campaign, despite the fact it is still ranked in the top two issues by voters.

The Mail recognises the huge contribution that countless migrants do make to Britain.

But our concern has always been that the huge numbers are placing too great a pressure on schools, housing, roads and hospitals – something shamefully ignored by the political class and a BBC that has all but censored debate on this vital issue.

Not to hold this debate is a betrayal of the British public.

Since 1997, Britain has been asked to absorb more than 2.5million arrivals.

No country can cope with social change on this scale.

The enemy within

How bizarre – and dangerous – that while the European Union rails against Russian expansionism, one of its member states is actively providing President Vladimir Putin military assistance.

By signing an agreement allowing Russian warships to use its naval bases, Cyprus not only makes a mockery of EU sanctions and sabre-rattling over Ukraine, but also compromises the security of all Nato countries.

Sea power: A 2003 file picture showing the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great in the Baltic Sea. Russia has signed an agrement with Cyprus to allow it to station its warships at the Mediterranean island's bases

Sea power: A 2003 file picture showing the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great in the Baltic Sea. Russia has signed an agrement with Cyprus to allow it to station its warships at the Mediterranean island's bases

For more than 160 years, Britain and other European nations have fought – notably in Crimea – to prevent Russia having a Mediterranean fleet.

Thanks to this shabby deal and his existing foothold in Syria, Mr Putin has had this huge strategic advantage handed to him on a plate.

 

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