Latest news with #massimmigration
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Ministers fear there could be riots as British towns with hundreds of Afghan arrivals finally learn WHY
Ministers have warned there could be riots after the lifting of a superinjunction which kept quiet a mass immigration scheme. The Ministry of Defence has alerted all Government departments of possible public disorder following the revelations that thousands of Afghans have been quietly slipped into Britain. It comes as those in towns across the country with large numbers of migrant arrivals from Afghanistan finally learn the true reason they came here. A blunder by the British military put 100,000 Afghans 'at risk of death' from the Taliban – but the scandal was covered up while ministers began rescuing them and bringing them to Britain. So far some 18,500 have quietly been brought here with many housed in military accommodation and hotels. A Whitehall briefing note from July 4, seen by the Daily Mail, states: 'MOD [Ministry of Defence] will need to work with colleagues across mitigate any risk of public disorder following the discharge of the injunction (noting that Home Office advice is that such a risk is higher during the summer period).' It can also today be revealed that last summer's riots following the Southport massacre were mainly in areas with the highest numbers of Afghan arrivals – and that ministers were privately warned about this. The public and MPs have not been told about a potential link between the government's secret immigration scheme and the far-right disorder that swept the nation. However the Mail can reveal that Cabinet ministers were briefed on it behind closed doors, on October 7 last year. In their briefing paper, seen by the Mail, officials warned: 'The recent far-right disorder targeting asylum seekers and Muslim communities was the worst outbreak of racial violence in the UK for decades. 'We know that 15 out of the 20 primary disorder hotspots are in the top 20 per cent of local authorities with the highest numbers of supported asylum seekers and Afghan resettlement arrivals.' However MPs were not given the full picture because of the superinjunction stifling Parliament. This is despite the fact there were numerous official inquiries under way at the time into what caused the violent unrest, in which police arrested 1,500 in towns and cities across the UK. A recent inquiry by the Commons' Home Affairs Select Committee concluded one of the key factors behind the rioting was that 'by failing to disclose information to the public, false claims filled the gap and flourished online, further undermining confidence in the police and public authorities'. At their meeting, ministers were urged to consider 'the importance of community cohesion'. The briefing paper noted: 'Given the scale of arrivals proposed, communities will need to see that arrivals are being managed in a fair and supported way.' The existence of the secret resettlement scheme will come as a shock – but not a surprise – in towns where Afghan arrivals have been hosted without locals being given the full facts. So many Afghans have been arriving that 20 per cent of all MOD property was given over to housing them, at one stage earlier this year. Yet even that was not enough, with many now being placed in taxpayer-funded hotels, despite the Government trying to reduce hotel use for migrants which overall costs taxpayers some £8million a day. In several towns there has been unease as baffled locals have not been given the true reasons for the influx and even their councillors and MPs have deliberately been kept in the dark. The Government said it was paying for 1,400 beds in hotels in Berkshire and West Sussex, with more hotels lined up in Preston, Aberdeen and Cardiff. In Bracknell, Berkshire, John Edwards, an independent town councillor, said: 'Bracknell has welcomed 300 Afghans and if these people served our Armed Forces then we want to treat them with dignity and respect and it's right we help them. But it's quite difficult when it's not being implemented fairly. They have been given a four-star hotel with their bills and their food covered and they get stuff like 'wraparound support'. Bracknell residents deserve the same level of support if this money is available.' Councillor Edwards said: 'I've been speaking to veterans who also served in Afghanistan, and one of them is in a one-bed flat with his wife and two kids - daughters aged three and five who both have been hospitalised because the mould in the flat is so bad – and they are not getting any help. 'He said something key to me, he said, 'you know, I was in Afghanistan and I know what these guys did for us, I know they are in danger from the Taliban, I want to help. But where's my help?'. 'And you know, they need to explain all this to people, not brush over any inconvenient truths, because that is what fosters resentment.' In May, Bracknell Forest Council issued a public plea to residents to ignore 'misinformation circulating'. Earlier this month, it issued an update admitting that if Afghans ended up homeless, it would have a duty to house them, but it added: 'Will [Afghan] people on the [scheme] get housing priority over veterans? No, the council's housing policy very clearly gives veterans high priority for housing. The people on the [scheme] are in transitional accommodation, commissioned and paid for by the MOD/central government.' No one in Bracknell nor anywhere else was told of the data breach and the real reason why the British government was bringing so many Afghans to the UK. Trouble also flared last year at service accommodation in Larkhill, Wiltshire, where Army chiefs were forced to shut down criticisms among families who raised issues with the relocation of Afghan refugees onto military estates. Soldiers' wives living in service accommodation had complained after Afghans were reportedly seen taking pictures of their children. They said they felt unsafe and argued the Afghans' behaviour, although likely to be innocent in motive, raised safeguarding issues. The Ministry of Defence came down hard, threatening troops and civilian staff with disciplinary action should they complain publicly again. The superinjunction has prevented the public and MPs being able to debate the merits of the scheme or understand the reasons why so many Afghans have been brought here. In private, Whitehall officials have been warning ministers for more than a year of 'significant integration considerations' of bringing such large numbers to Britain including the impact on 'local services such as education and healthcare', a briefing paper shows.
Telegraph
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
This is how mass migration will change Britain beyond recognition
Britain will be unrecognisable by the end of this century. Unless things change, and change fast, the population of the UK will be permanently transformed by mass immigration. White Britons will become a minority by the year 2063. The foreign-born and their immediate descendants will become a majority by 2079. And nearly one in four people in the UK will be following Islam by the year 2100; this figure would rise to around one in three among under-40s. Many people struggle to make sense of the pace and scale of these changes. They ask how a nation can be transformed this fast without the consent of the governed. But, last week, brand new data from the Office for National Statistics has made it abundantly clear that these trends are already well underway. The findings are indeed shocking: more than one in three babies that were born in England and Wales last year have mothers who were not born in the UK; this rises to more than 40 per cent for babies in England, a record high and up by nearly 10-points in less than a decade. London, obviously, is at the forefront of these dramatic shifts. All six areas where 80 per cent or more of babies have at least one foreign-born parent are in the capital, with the City of London, Brent, Newham, Harrow, Ealing, and Westminster experiencing the most profound changes. But such is the legacy of mass immigration, since it began under New Labour and was then mainstreamed by the Tories, that lots of areas outside London are now also witnessing similar changes. If you exclude London, for instance, the one place in the country that has the highest share of babies who have at least one foreign-born parent is Luton: the figure there is an astonishing 79 per cent.
Telegraph
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
I deeply regret ‘island of strangers' speech, says Starmer
Sir Keir Starmer has said he 'deeply' regrets saying that Britain risked becoming an 'island of strangers' because of mass immigration. The Prime Minister said it 'wasn't right' to use that 'particular phrase', despite No 10 previously insisting that he stood by his words. He said neither he nor his speech-writers had been aware that the remarks could have been interpreted as an 'echo' of the language of Enoch Powell. The comments made by the Prime Minister last month drew a fierce backlash from Left-wing critics, who accused him of 'reflecting the language' of the politician's infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech. Sir Keir told The Observer: 'I wouldn't have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell. I had no idea – and my speech-writers didn't know either. But that particular phrase – no, it wasn't right. I'll give you the honest truth – I deeply regret using it.' Earlier this month, the Prime Minister suggested that he regretted the speech, admitting that he could have been more articulate. He insisted the message he was 'trying to get across' was supposed to have been about bringing people together. Sir Keir delivered the controversial speech last month while announcing a new programme of immigration restrictions. He said: 'Let me put it this way – nations depend on rules, fair rules. Sometimes they are written down, often they are not, but either way, they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other. 'In a diverse nation like ours ... we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.' Sir Keir said very high levels of immigration in recent years had caused 'incalculable' damage to the UK. It drew a furious backlash, with John McDonnell, the former Labour shadow chancellor, accusing the Prime Minister of 'reflecting the language of Enoch Powell'. Zarah Sultana, the suspended Labour MP, called the speech 'sickening'. Powell, the former Conservative cabinet minister who died in 1998, said in his 1968 speech that the native British population had 'found themselves made strangers in their own country' because of immigration. Despite the backlash, No 10 refused to retract the remarks. Addressing the reaction linking Sir Keir's words to those of Powell, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'We completely reject that comparison.' Asked to confirm that the Prime Minister stood by his comments, he said: 'Yes.' Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, also argued that what Sir Keir had said was 'completely different' to Powell. She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I don't think it is right to make those comparisons. It is completely different and the Prime Minister said yesterday, I think almost in the same breath, talked about the diverse country that we are and that being part of our strength.'
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Diane Abbott is pushing the Left's biggest myth about immigration
The Labour Left were always bound to loathe Sir Keir Starmer's recent speech about the downsides of mass immigration. All the same, one of their objections to it strikes me as somewhat peculiar. At a rally on Saturday, the veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott thundered that Sir Keir's speech was 'nonsense' – because, as she stoutly reminded her audience, 'immigrants built this land'. Stirring stuff. I can see only one small problem. It's not strictly true, is it? Clearly Ms Abbott disagrees. Indeed, she proudly declared that her own parents 'helped to build this country'. As she herself acknowledged, though, they only arrived here from Jamaica in the 1950s. What precisely does Ms Abbott think Britain looked like, before her parents' ship pulled in? A barren, primitive, uncivilised wilderness, whose humble natives dwelt in bushes and subsisted on nettles and raw shrew? Did her parents look around, sigh, and then patiently set about erecting St Paul's Cathedral and Blenheim Palace? I'm not convinced that they did. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that most of this country was built a fair bit earlier, largely by people who were born in it. This is because, until quite recently, only a very small percentage of the population was born abroad. Between 1951 and 2001, the average annual net immigration figure was 7,800. In 2023, by contrast, it was 906,000. It doesn't take a mathematician of Ms Abbott's stature to recognise that this is quite a sharp increase. Still, I don't mean to pick on her. She's far from alone. In recent years, any number of Left-wing politicians and pundits have taken to pushing the line that 'immigrants built Britain'. On last week's edition of the BBC's Question Time, for example, the retired trade union leader Mark Serwotka informed viewers that Britain is only 'the great country it is because of centuries of immigration'. From the Left's point of view, I suppose I can see this tactic's advantages. Any time a voter dares suggest that net immigration of almost a million a year is a touch on the high side, and possibly not entirely sustainable in the longer term, shut them up by telling them that a) it's always been like this, and b) they should be grateful. The risk, though, is that some voters might feel a tiny bit insulted. Because the claim that 'immigrants built Britain' implies that the natives were so ignorant, lazy and useless, they achieved nothing until their superiors arrived from abroad to lift them out of savagery. Come to think of it, I'm reasonably sure that the Left used to have a word for that type of attitude. It was 'colonialism'. 'Way of the World' is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 6am every Tuesday and Saturday Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Diane Abbott is pushing the Left's biggest myth about immigration
The Labour Left were always bound to loathe Sir Keir Starmer's recent speech about the downsides of mass immigration. All the same, one of their objections to it strikes me as somewhat peculiar. At a rally on Saturday, the veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott thundered that Sir Keir's speech was 'nonsense' – because, as she stoutly reminded her audience, 'immigrants built this land'. Stirring stuff. I can see only one small problem. It's not strictly true, is it? Clearly Ms Abbott disagrees. Indeed, she proudly declared that her own parents 'helped to build this country'. As she herself acknowledged, though, they only arrived here from Jamaica in the 1950s. What precisely does Ms Abbott think Britain looked like, before her parents' ship pulled in? A barren, primitive, uncivilised wilderness, whose humble natives dwelt in bushes and subsisted on nettles and raw shrew? Did her parents look around, sigh, and then patiently set about erecting St Paul's Cathedral and Blenheim Palace? I'm not convinced that they did. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that most of this country was built a fair bit earlier, largely by people who were born in it. This is because, until quite recently, only a very small percentage of the population was born abroad. Between 1951 and 2001, the average annual net immigration figure was 7,800. In 2023, by contrast, it was 906,000. It doesn't take a mathematician of Ms Abbott's stature to recognise that this is quite a sharp increase. Still, I don't mean to pick on her. She's far from alone. In recent years, any number of Left-wing politicians and pundits have taken to pushing the line that 'immigrants built Britain'. On last week's edition of the BBC's Question Time, for example, the retired trade union leader Mark Serwotka informed viewers that Britain is only 'the great country it is because of centuries of immigration'. From the Left's point of view, I suppose I can see this tactic's advantages. Any time a voter dares suggest that net immigration of almost a million a year is a touch on the high side, and possibly not entirely sustainable in the longer term, shut them up by telling them that a) it's always been like this, and b) they should be grateful. The risk, though, is that some voters might feel a tiny bit insulted. Because the claim that 'immigrants built Britain' implies that the natives were so ignorant, lazy and useless, they achieved nothing until their superiors arrived from abroad to lift them out of savagery. Come to think of it, I'm reasonably sure that the Left used to have a word for that type of attitude. It was 'colonialism'. If you want a picture of the present... It was a bright cold day in June, and Winston Smith had just sat down at his desk in the Ministry of Truth. This morning he had an important job to do. A dangerous book urgently needed to be memory-holed. It was entitled Nineteen Eighty-Four. For decades, Nineteen Eighty-Four had been acclaimed as a landmark work of literature. Suddenly, however, it had been found to contain the most sickening thoughtcrime. The person who had made this shocking discovery was an American novelist named Dolen Perkins-Valdez. In a foreword she'd been commissioned to write for the book's latest edition, she declared that its main character exhibited attitudes towards women that were appallingly 'problematic'. Not only that, but the book didn't feature any characters who were black. 'A sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find,' she wrote, 'in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity.' Privately, Winston suspected that the reason the book did not speak much to race and ethnicity was that it had been written on a Scottish island by an Edwardian Englishman in the late 1940s. That was probably also the reason why none of its characters identified as genderqueer or pansexual, and why none of them had glued their buttocks to the M25 in support of puberty blockers for Palestine. But it was not Winston's place to make excuses for crimethink. In any case, he was used to such tasks. Not long ago he had been presented with the complete works of a children's author named Roald Dahl, and ordered to replace the entire text of each book with the endlessly repeated phrase 'BE KIND'. Had it been up to him, Winston would have been perfectly willing to rectify the text of Nineteen Eighty-Four, until all traces of crimethink had been eliminated. He could have ensured that it contained the correct number of characters who were 2SLGBTQIA+, neurodivergent or of Colour, and that they all expressed the officially mandated opinions about Islamophobia and net zero. The Ministry, however, had decided that there was no time. Better just to drop the offending object down the memory hole, and move swiftly on to his next task. This one was going to be tough. According to reports, there was a new TV adaptation of Harry Potter on the way, and the cast had completely failed to denounce JK Rowling. Winston had a lot of unpersoning to do.
