THE Tories try to show they are tough on immigration while Labour try to show they are compassionate. They are both empty poses.
Labour like to chortle that, to date, the Tories have sent more Home Secretaries than refugees to Rwanda.
It is a fair point, not least because the UK has paid Rwanda £240million so far — with another £50million due next year — for a deportation scheme that may never work.
But with Labour odds-on to win the next general election, it is worth asking — well, what would YOU do about immigration, comrade?
Keir Starmer says he wants to target people traffickers and “smash the gangs”.
Don’t we all? In March, Rishi Sunak pledged £480million to France, spread over three years, to invest in police, technology and intelligence, to reduce the illegal crossings in small boats. And it is working.
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You would never guess it from the news, but Sunak is actually doing a very good job at getting on top of illegal crossings.
Because as Channel crossings are going DOWN by 34 per cent, illegal crossings of the Mediterranean are going UP by 83 per cent.
So Rishi is doing far better than most European leaders in tackling illegal immigration.
But Sunak has — foolishly, in my opinion — staked his career on making his deportation scheme work.
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Yet even if Rishi got his Rwanda plan past Parliament and endless legal objections, it would hardly make a dent in immigration levels.
Here is the dilemma that faces every nation in the Western world.
The reason we are having to accommodate enough arrivals to populate an unbuilt city every year — 745,000 is the latest net migration statistic — has almost nothing to do with the small boats.
Most of those newcomers are legal immigrants.
What are Sunak and Starmer going to do about them? They don’t know.
Yes, the small boats are infuriating — a total violation of the British idea of fairness.
That is why they have achieved such prominence in our national consciousness.
Nothing is more likely to outrage the British sense of justice than seeing someone jump a queue.
And people perish in those boats.
This week a dinghy containing 66 people got into trouble five miles from the French coast.
One man died and another is critically ill. But the success rate of the illegal crossings is high.
They make us feel like we are a soft touch. And we are.
Some 263,000 non-EU students arrived with family members on a study visa this year, compared to 29,000 asylum seekers on small boats.
We should welcome foreign students — but why does any foreign student need to bring hubby and the kids? They are students.
“We cannot go on with the numbers coming to Britain that are coming,” Nigel Farage said in the I’m A Celebrity jungle.
Mickey Mouse studies
But that is far easier said than sorted.
We no longer train our youngsters to be carpenters, brickies, roofers, electricians, plasterers and plumbers.
For example, the Government dreams of building 300,000 new homes a year, but there are only an estimated 70,000 working bricklayers in a country of 67million.
We need the skills immigrants bring.
Our kids go to university and collect their degree in advanced Mickey Mouse studies that is worthless in the real world.
So we need to import skilled workers from foreign shores or nothing would ever get built.
Neither party has the vision to address our skills deficit or the fact that there are some Brits who have had a work ethic bypass.
There are 949,000 job vacancies in the UK and 5.2million Brits who are currently on incapacity benefits, jobseekers allowance or receiving workless Universal Credit payments.
Are they all unwell?
Nick our jobs
Immigrants are not coming here to nick our jobs.
They are coming here to do the jobs the locals lack the will, the skill or the inclination to do.
I have spent a large part of the past week visiting a seriously ill family member in the intensive care unit of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London.
And I saw that without immigrants, our NHS would simply not exist.
Sunak might make his Rwanda ruse work and Starmer could crush the people traffickers.
Yet this would do nothing to address the problem that we will struggle with for a lifetime.
Millions of people across the planet long to live in our country.
And we can’t give a home to them all.
The Crown got it all wrong and gave us ice queen, not our Queen
WHEN you see the three Queens of The Crown lined up in a publicity shot – young Queen Claire Foy, middle-aged Queen Olivia Colman, elderly Queen Imelda Staunton – you understand what the show, which just released its final episodes, got totally wrong.
The Queen.
Where’s the warmth? Where’s the humour? Where’s the bravery, the stoicism – where’s the twinkle in the eye?
Not in Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton.
This portrayal of the Queen really grates.
Seeing those three po-faced biddies, their mouths set in tight lines of haughty disapproval, I vividly recalled the last public photos of The Queen meeting Liz Truss, her new, and last, Prime Minister, just two days before her death.
That Queen, the one her people knew and loved, bears no resemblance to The Crown’s ice-cold, matronly monarchs.
If the real Queen Elizabeth II had been even remotely like these hatchet-faced harridans, we would be a republic by now.
COP28 hurts word
CLIMATE change conference COP28 did more harm than good for our planet.
More than 25,000 flights brought 90,000 freeloaders to spend two weeks in December in sunny Dubai at the UN-organised jolly, the world leaders invariably arriving by private jet.
And to what purpose?
These self-important, virtue-signalling windbags crossed their fingers and hoped to die if the world did not “transition away from fossil fuels”.
This in a country, the United Arab Emirates, that owes its fabulous wealth to fossil fuels.
This in a world where India and China are expanding their new coal power capacity.
This in a year where the world used more oil, coal and natural gas than any in human history.
And the green hypocrites in Dubai gave themselves a big pat on the back for caring so much.
Where were Just Stop Oil when we needed them?
DUA LIPA is the new global ambassador for Porsche.
And you can’t help noticing that the images released so far have featured far more of Dua’s endless legs than Porsche’s motors.
Which is probably fine by the kind of middle-aged bloke who still dreams of owning a Porsche.
Meg is pig sick
I CAN’T see Meghan Markle being too concerned that Peppa Pig was more popular on Netflix than the six-part, self-obsessed, self-pitying Harry & Meghan documentary she made with Mr Meghan.
But what will definitely trouble Meghan is that Suits – her old legal drama – was more popular than her doc with Harry.
That’s got to hurt, when the public like your old stuff much more than your new stuff.
Brit of an old story
IT will be yesterday once more at the Brits 2024 when those grizzled rock aristocrats the Rolling Stones do battle for all the big gongs with reformed Britpop veterans Blur.
Blur released The Ballad Of Darren in July, their first record in eight years, while the Stones returned – without the late Charlie Watts – a few months later with Hackney Diamonds, their first album of original material since 2005.
Both bands will qualify for Best British Album, Group Of The Year and Alternative Rock Act, which means they will clash antlers numerous times on British music’s big night next March.
Blur v the Stones in 2024 – who would have thought it?
And who’s presenting? The Hairy Cornflake?
A WOMAN went into her bathroom and found Freddie Mercury waiting for her.
It turned out to be an eerie silhouette on a tile, complete with Mercury’s trademark pursed mouth, lush moustache and expressive eyebrows.
Freddie waiting for a lady in her bathroom – what are the odds of that?
I can imagine Fred rolling his eyes and pursing his lips.
“First time for everything, darling,” Fred would waspishly remark.
“I’M not exaggerating,” says BBC presenter Jane Hill.
“It was the most nervous I have ever been!”
Jane had just recorded her spot on Celebrity Mastermind, answering questions about the music of ABBA.
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And I know what she means.
Mastermind is the only show on TV where appearing once in a lifetime is plenty.
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