My five-point fan to deal with the migration crisis
They’re laughing at us, I thought. And they were. Immigrants housed in a smart hotel were leaning out of their windows, grinning, filming with their phones as the fractures in our baffled and confused society played out in angry scuffles below.
They waved, blew kisses, made Churchillian V for victory signs. They were here; they’d made it to the promised land. Hallelujah.
Which means God be praised and is likely to be rendered in their language as Allahu Akbar (God is greater).
This was happening at the Thistle City Barbican Hotel in Islington, north London, which has a contract with the Home Office to house only migrants.
Outside, police struggled to keep apart rival groups of protesters, some supporting immigration, some voicing anger against it. The same scene was being repeated in Manchester city centre.
On Monday morning, Labour put up Angela Eagle, Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum, to try to quell the unrest.
“Anger won’t get you anywhere,” she told Sky News, urging people to show patience. “What we have to do is recognise the values we have in this country, the rule of law we have in this country.”
She then pointed to the £100 million the Government has earmarked for tackling the people smuggling gangs. But she and Prime Minister Keir Starmer are missing the point.
It is fine to target the gangs, just as it is fine to warn universities that they will be barred from accepting foreign students if those students use it as a back door to claim asylum; and it’s fine to bring in a fast track system to clear the asylum backlog.
But this is tinkering at the edges of the problem. Nothing less than root and branch reform of the immigration system will end this farce.
To answer Dame Angela, one of the core values we have in this country is fairness. Most people don’t think it is fair that migrants are rocking up on flimsy boats from the safe haven of France to claim a hotel room in central London, all found.
As for the rule of law, haven’t the police completely lost the plot? They have now charged a man, said to be an Afghan asylum seeker, with the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton, Warwickshire; and another with kidnap, strangulation and aiding and abetting rape.
Despite urging from local councillors, they refused to reveal the ethnicity or immigration status of the suspects. Now that the two men have been charged, they say national guidance does not permit them to.
Downing Street refused to endorse this interpretation and by yesterday the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was urging police to show “greater transparency”.
Police fear disclosing the truth would fan the flames of racism. It might. It is certainly lighting a fire under Nigel Farage, whose Reform party continues to win seats in local elections.
He has accused the police of a cover-up and is calling for the ethnicity of sexual assault suspects to be revealed to maintain public trust.
Farage is riding a wave of anger… the anger Dame Angela says won’t get us anywhere.
Anger that 32,000 immigrants, many of them illegals, are currently being housed in hotels at a cost of £5.7 million a day – an average of almost £119 per migrant, per night.
Anger that people are getting rich at our expense. While our taxes go to fund this madness, a man who used to run a caravan park in Essex, Graham King, 57, has become a billionaire providing housing for asylum seekers.
He has been raking in £4.8 million a day. The smuggling gangs have been making millions too.
Labour have been in power for 13 months. They have reached a tipping point in their fragile hold on the electorate. They can no longer blame the Tories for everything, though Conservative Governments failed miserably to deal with immigration.
Starmer said he had a plan. He didn’t. But here’s one:-
🔴 Create barracks-style camps and empty out the hotels.
🔴 Give all of us an identity card and require everyone to carry it with them at all times.
🔴 Nobody who comes to Britain illegally, either by small boat or by overstaying their visa, may claim asylum.
🔴 Immigrants who have been granted British citizenship may not claim benefits until they have been paying taxes for five years.
🔴 If they commit a serious crime within those five years, their citizenship is revoked – and they can be sent home.
Too harsh, some will say, but it seems to me fair. It might weed out the chancers and the criminals – and it demonstrates that there is no such thing as free money.
Those who still want to come here can form an orderly queue and wait for a visa. Or stay in France. That works too.
*****
I have enjoyed the needle that has developed between the two teams in this summer’s Test series.
I’m not sure what started it but the Indians seemed to take deep exception to something that was said.
They hit back to such effect that even England’s top batsman Joe Root – usually imperturbable at the crease – came close to losing his temper. And before long the teams were being separated by the umpires.
All excellent practice for the Ashes series against Australia, past masters at getting under the skin of the opposition. They invented “sledging”, as they call it, to break the concentration of their rivals and put the batsman off his stroke.
To get myself in the mood for the contest Down Under, I searched out some of the best examples, which I now pass on. Some recent Aussie players, such as David Warner, resorted to crude, ugly insults but I’ll stick to the witty ones.
Glenn McGrath to Michael Atherton:
McGrath: “Athers, it would help if you got rid of the shit at the end of your bat.”
Atherton inspects the bottom of his bat.
McGrath: “No, no, the other end.”
Rodney Marsh and Ian Botham:
Marsh: “How’s your wife and my kids?”
Botham: “The wife’s fine. The kids are retarded.”
Ian Healey to Nasser Hussain:
Steve Waugh wanted to pressurise Hussain and moved Ricky Ponting in close.
Waugh: “Field at silly point. I want you right under his nose.”
Healey: “That could be anywhere inside a three-mile radius.”
And finally, I don’t think there is such a thing as sledging between team mates but I liked this example of Fred Trueman’s notoriously blunt Yorkshire humour:
Raman Subba Row apologises to the great fast bowler after letting the ball go through his legs for a boundary.
Subba Row: “Sorry, Fred, I should have kept my legs together.”
Trueman: “Not you, son, your mother.”
*****
There are lies, damned lies and Reach stories. Not all of them, but enough to make you wonder about the truth of the others.
Reach is moving inexorably towards becoming an online news outlet. But it still has three national newspapers: The Daily Express, the Daily Star and the Daily Mirror.
Some good journalists remain on these print editions, though all their editors have, one by one, been given the old heave-ho.
Those left are left in no doubt that the online operation is supreme and they must generate enough clicks to justify their place.
I hear they are no longer given sufficient time to research stories properly. Some, angry and disillusioned, are “simply waiting for their redundo cheque”.
But the keyboard warriors are failing to meet their targets, I am told. And so, rather than hiring talented reporters to bring in compelling stories, bosses are ordering that they mine ancient tales that might gain clicks.
The date of these stories is, naturally, kept from the poor reader. Not all of them are fooled. “Ripoff”, “lazy crap” and “churnalism” are some of the comments hurled at Reach.
The Express carried a piece with the headline: “Doctor decapitated by lift in horror hospital accident as colleague watches on”.
I would read that. In fact, I probably did. It’s a story from 2003.
The Mirror is at it too. “Horrifying final moments of mum killed by gigantic stingray jumping out of sea”, read the heading. (Have you noticed how you never really need to read the story under a Reach headline?) Anyway, that one’s from 2008.
The more gruesome the story, the better editors like it. They are telling reporters: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Whatever that means.
The virus is spreading to Reach’s provincial publications. Leeds Live carried an agency story of a woman pronounced dead for eight minutes who came back to declare: “Death is an illusion.”
Trouble is, they just put a staff byline on it and carried the agency copy… above the original, complete with the agency’s notes.
It seems the Drone leader of last week had a valid point.
RICHARD DISMORE
6 August 2025
