I’m getting to the stage where I cant bear thinking about what is happening to this beautiful country, filled mostly with tolerant, open minded people. We are being destroyed by sheer numbers which are undermining all our public services,but worse than that are the numbers of violent criminals we now have here.We, particularly women, are far less safe than when I grew up in the 60s and 70s. The difference is huge. I despise the politicians who have allowed this to happen and the many on the left who have positively encouraged it. They are locking us up for thought crime while real violence and a destruction of our culture is happening all around us and we aren’t even allowed to talk about it.
Yes I agree. It makes me so angry hearing the figures and situation being explained so clearly by Matt. Most of all, it makes me extremely sad that we are losing our once great country.
Don't forget the many on the right who have also positively encouraged this too. When faced with a choice between (a) honouring election promises and (b) facilitating record levels of mass migration from countries with which many senior Tory ministers have family links, they chose (b) every time. Perhaps even more than Labour, the modern Tory party champions the politics of race, gender and mass migration.
The Tory party is the most to blame. Of course Blair and Brown set the ball rolling but the Tories had 14 bloody years and did nothing other than relax the rules further.
Absolutely. The Tories did nothing despite repeated promises but it was the left that openly encouraged mass immigration whilst calling us racist for expressing concerns.
Some bright spark once said the only way to make the British stand up is first to bring them to their knees. It is analagous to the grand British military tradition of losing every battle except the last. The enemy is woke left socialism allied with political Islam. It is an unholy alliance of convenience based solely on their shared hatred of Britain's history and Judeo-Christian heritage. The Labour Party, infamously and in the words of Alistair Campbell, does not do God. Neither do many Conservatives. Consequently UK is wide open to subordination to a culture that not only does God but makes politics God's servant such that no compromise is permitted.
Putin's Russia is not the primary threat. He is an opportunist. His provocations, spying, etc continue the pattern established by the old Soviet regime. If he could be sure of no severe retaliation he would take the opportunity to attack but UK in NATO is well guarded against a Russian threat materialising. One thing Russia is not is socialist. That ideology has been adopted in the West without any assistance from Putin's Russia, which rejected it long ago once it learned it could only fail. Too many in the West have still not learned that socialism never works and is always highly damaging, be it communism, fascism or national socialism. Too many excuse its failures by saying it has not been tried properly, so they try harder each time - hence they get more extreme and authoritarian like Starmer's Gang.
Neither has the West yet learned how to deal with the threat of Political Islam. It fails to understand that for Islamists there is no compromise, no surrender, and they really, really do not share Western values. If they have to choose, the vast majority of Muslims will side with their Islamic leaders, not with Western culture.
Mass imigration of cultures antithetical to British culture must be stopped. This threat is existential.
Society is glued together by a social contract. Each of us gives up a degree of freedom in return from sharing the mutual benefit. It's two-way and only works if it's a fair trade. The deal is policed by our elected representatives.
Matt, once again a great article, but what I ask you are we going to do. This is all part of the globalist plan. Starmer is a WEF disciple, as are all the European leaders with open borders. We, the Uk are target number 1. Bring down our country, bring down our economy and France, Germany, Holland with Spain will fold into line. The WEF NATO structure, the great reset and the one world government will be created. Look what happened to Uk, they will say and see, they left the protection of the Federation, became isolated and were engulfed by the departure that left them outside of the European accord. Left them unprotected and without defence. 2.8m people have signed a petition to oust this Labour debacle. Nothing will happen. With criminals, liars and despots in charge. We are, quite literally, being abused, disavowed and discriminated against. Bankrupt the Uk, you bankrupt us. I keep saying, if you want to control the people take away their money, remove their food and create destitution. Brake our will, remove our freedom. Create, as we were in the 12th century a nation of tide and serviles. Starmer believes that I along with every business owner I know, is not a worker. Farmers are land thieves and Davos is the best place to be. I say send him to Davos with a clear message. The Uk is a sovereign state and you are not welcome.
Mark: There is very little we can do now, its too late to go back. What we can still do, though, is to regain control of the onward march of change to the extent that "we" remain a majority in our country.
There are a couple of things and labour is showing us the way! They have liars, members of parliament who are in positions , based on false information. Reeve lied on her cv. The transport minister has just resigned, a known criminal. Starmer is complicit and will soon be outed as being the man who secured the father of the Southport killers asylum. Has had to install his lover in the House of Lords. Is in some way compromised by Blackrock. Soon all will fallout in to the public domain. No one can hide these lies for forever!
Well, we all know who is to blame for this: the Conservatives, and principally Boris Johnson, which means that not only have the idiots destroyed our way of life, but they have left themselves wide-open to attacks from the Labour Party of all people, who can incredibly put all of the blame on the Conservatives, and while reducing the numbers slightly, can claim that they are redressing the situation!
So if we wish to see immigration numbers fall massively, it is obvious that the Conservatives will not do it, as they had their chance and did the opposite and increased the numbers, whilst lying through their teeth. Labour are wedded to immigration and the creation of an Islamic state, as well as being even bigger liars and crooks (if that is possible); so who are we to vote for? Certainly not the LibDems who are also in favour of mass immigration as well as rejoining the EU, so that leaves a plethora of small parties (I like the English Democrats) who are unlikely to ever gain power without PR, which leaves the only viable alternative in Reform. I too share Ben Habib's reservations about Reform, and I am sad that Ben and Nigel could not find a space big enough for both of them, but realistically, Reform are the only opposition, so we may as well give them a shot, particularly with Trump and Musk backing them.
Reform are our best hope right now, but nowhere near radical enough for what our country needs. Mass deportations and completely closed borders are needed for at least 5 years. Reform won't do that.
Reform won’t go that far but they are electable. The fringe loony parties like Homeland that go that far aren’t electable. Just look at the abuse Farage gets from the likes of Sky News or watch him on Question Time next week. He’s still by far our best hope even if he’s not “the full Tommy Robinson”.
The only decent Tory figures in the 20th century were Churchill, Powell and Thatcher. The recent leaders (Cameron, May, Boris, Truss, Sunak, Badenoch) typify how far party has fallen. When you have the means to do something but still can’t do it you are a Dodo. A dodo bird had wings but could not fly. They did not deliver a meaningful Brexit.
The CP are actually more despicable than Labour when it comes to saying one thing and doing another. They are full of Bori (pleural of Boris). Useless, amoral politicians.
Colin: I don't share your optimism. Reform continue to spout nonsense about "pushing the boats back" (rubber dinghies) and drawing comparisons with Australia (rigid hulled boats - not the same at all). They actually haven't got any answers (yet?).I see that without more ado, we have used lasers to bring down the drones over the airports. Use them, along with satellite surveillance, to disable the dinghie from source to shore.
Good thinking. Even if it was possible and I don’t see why not as they say they can hit a £1 coin from 10 miles away, Starmer would drone on adenoidanaly, about “Internashhional Law”, “Our Colleagues in Frawnce” and He’d work out another way to bring them over to keep the supply route open.
Central London was grid locked last night as a convoy Albanians in cars celebrated their national day with a cacophony of horns blaring. The police kettled them around Trafalgar Square causing large traffic jams in all directions. Earlier that day, several hundred Hamas supporters tried to storm the Foreign Office but were held back by police without helmets or riot gear (in contrast to their of handling mainly white English in Whitehall back in the summer protesting about Southport) and the day before there was disorder from Kurds protesting about the arrest of six of them for terrorism offences (echoes of Harehills) and Eritrean factions fought in South East London a couple of months ago and ... and ... and endlessly.
Two years ago over several days Hindus and Muslims set about each other in Leicester. And over decades thousands of young girls were sexually abused in northern towns by mainly Pakistani men with authorities knowingly turning a blind eye (and for which none have been held to account). Last night it was revealed that Jewish enighbourhoods in North London had received leaflets saying they should leave or face being killed. A QC (at the time of the 2017 election) stood in Bradford. He said the main question he faced on the doorstep when canmpaigning was what was his position on Kashmir.
This is modern Britain, identitarian, sectarian Britain. The number of people forming a 'we', who are the soon to be remnants of the historically British 'we', are a diminshing proportion of the people who now live on this island. Demographic trends point to this particular 'we' becoming a minority within a generation or two. The descendants of this historic 'we' are already a minority in many schools and so will render the old 'we' a real minority as they take over over institutions. The other groups of 'we', many living in parallel societies, are not assimilating but celebrating their ties to other countries and cultures.
The scale of the problem, should there ever be a government minded to try and reverse all this, is probably (and I think almost certainly) such as to render it insuperable. It will not be enough to merely reduce immigration. Deportation and remigration will be required. And we won't get that.
Meanwhile, Richard Tice referred to some 20,000 at a recent Tommy Robinson rally as "that lot" with whom he wanted nothing to do with and Farage appears to believe in civic nationalism and not deportations or remigration. Renaud Camus, of 'The Great Replacement', albeit in a French context, exposed the lie of civic nationalism:
"When a veiled woman with a shaky command of our language, entirely ignorant of our culture can say to a native Frenchman with a passionate interest in Roman churches, the finer points of vocabulary and syntax, Montaigne, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Burgundy Wine, and Proust and whose family has for several generations lived in the same little valley of the Vivrais […] “I am just as French as you are”, it follows that being French is nothing"
And so it is being British is nothing if the Libyan immigrant who bombed the Manchester Arena, raised in the "Little Libya" area of Manchester and who took holidays in Libya, the country his family were allegedly refugees from, is also described as British.
On Armistice day last year my wife and I were wearing poppies. Some masked men, dressed us wannabe Hamas fighters, passed us and glanced at our poppies and said "fuckers" illustrating that the 'we' I used to be a member of has gone.
Cancel culture began 56 years ago when a certain politician referred to us "building our own funeral pyre" for which "we must be mad, literally mad".
Our politicians are alert, sort of, at last, to the effect on services of rapid popuation growth out pacing infrastructure, but only so far as it may affect votes for them in the next election. None are talking about the 'we' in any serious way (if at all). It is a problem too difficult to acknowledge politically. In any case, Starmer and Lammy are wedded to the universality of human rights in denial of the culturally specific nature of rights and so to the validity of national cultures. For them there is nothing to defend.
Starmer is not wedded to the universality of human rights, quite the reverse. For Starmer, specified minority groups have rights, so do criminals (like those whose deportation he prevented). But people of the wrong race and social class who were upset by Southport are not considered sufficiently human by Starmer to enjoy human rights.
Starmer's argument was that migrants once here enjoyed rights which the Southport rioters were criminally trying to deny. That's the point about universalism from the left's point of view. It applies to criminals as much as anyone. Univeral Human RIghts specifically denies any privilege to indigenous citizens. We are all fungible.
This is very depressing, but raises an interesting question which I think about a lot - how do you have freedom of speech and expression but also establish the dominance of British culture and customs over foreign?
A government that would ban flags and the practice of customs they don't like, will eventually ban everything they don't like, including dissent.
Statistics are really shocking, but also really useful to rationalise and justify how I feel. Just the sort of statistics you should have the opportunity to share on Question Time! I like your definition of what makes a nation.
But what can we do? I’ve voted and voted, and waited and waited, for promises that never came. We can’t wait another 4 years, there will be nothing left. I think it’s already too late. It’s horrifying to watch this happen and I feel so despondent about the future. This is the only home we have.
Also I would like to see a public discussion about what all these extra millions people (and their children) are going to do once AI and greater automation starts taking more and more jobs, which is going to happen sooner than people think. How is our society going to hold together in the face of this? I think every single politician, business leader and public servant who pushed us into this should be personally tried for treason.
How? Easy. Direct Democracy a la Switzerland. See my comment on last Sunday's 4 Swiss referendums (above) that DEFEATED 3 Laws already passed by the Swiss government and parliament that the Swiss people were against - and overturned via their Direct Democracy. Why is no UK political party making Direct Democracy their policy platform? The people - YOU and me - want political power. Direct Democracy gives that to us!
Just look at Ireland who are further along this road than we are! Notice also that one of the Irish Government's biggest critics, Connor Macgregor, has been nobbled, days before a GE; interesting no? Let's hope that the Irish people vote for an anti-immigrant party.
Just like Trump and Stormy Daniels, who accepted a payout to keep quiet, and then spilled the beans anyway. Trump and Daniels are both culpable in this infidelity, her as much as him, but for her to do the rounds of news media and claim to be the victim is a bit rich; she knew that Trump was married, yet carried on anyway; it was obvious that she saw a quick romp as a path to riches, and all the more fool Trump for getting involved. I wonder where people keep their brains sometimes!
It all falls into place. Labour is now ranting about immigration (it only took months after criminalising good, decent working people to post on social media), yet clearly in the data, it all started around the time Blair and a Labour-run Government, 1997–2010.
The former year clearly was the initial spike of the increase. All these "public servants" need to be investigated and held to account—all of them for, at the very minimum, inciting violence and conspiracy to commit multiple murders. It's the only profession that seems to be above the law... this needs rectifying. Just because they make them, they should abide by them too!!
There are multiple interviews with him. I think Dan Wootton on outspoken asked him. He's not left the fray just taking some time out to consider the way forward.
For Farage to disparage him as "poor old Ben" says a lot. Habib is a million times more educated articulate and perceptive than Farage, which must be a problem for him. He also has more courage and integrity. In my opinion.
It is extraordinary that in this situation so few people vote for the only party that would stop the insanity: Reform. Is that because they believe it would be a wasted vote in UK's 2-Party FPTP system? Is it because the truth is so well hidden people just don't know? Is it because so many naively believe politicians' promises? Or are people just in despair and see no point in voting at all? I find it hard to understand why anyone would vote Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem but millions, the majority, do. Why? The ghastly truth might be that an extraordinary number of people actually support these policies. If so they would come from the majority who are net beneficiaries of the state, Remainers, Palestine supporters, anti-Semites, the hard Left and Woke who hate UK and free-loading immigrants in UK for the benefits. That's an awful lot of ghastly people.
Society and culture are a social contract whereby we sacrifice some degree of individual autonomy to be part of our tribe. This is an excellent thoughtful piece Matt. It’s made me think about our society and how that balances against our individual freedoms. Our tribe has over time set rules and conditions which must be followed to allow individuals to be part of that tribe and over time these have become our laws. This has created a stable and generally fair and happy society which gave opportunities to the underprivileged and fought and won against tyranny in two World Wars. What we’ve witnessed over my lifetime since the 1960s is the weakening of those rules as people have joined us from other societies who refuse to give up their individual autonomies and the rules of their tribes and don’t want to be part of our tribe. To them our laws are irrelevant and not to be followed. Instead they either want their laws to sit alongside ours (eg Sharia) or to replace ours (eg Islam becomes the dominant culture). I worry for my children and grandchildren but our dominant culture is being destroyed.
I've just subscribed after weeks of reading your emails Matt. I know my thoughts below are well trailed by you and others, but I had to say something.
The minimum expectation of any government is that it can control its borders. Ours are incapable or, as you suggest, simply unwilling. We are fed an Orwellian Newspeak narrative diminishing our freedom to express thoughts other than the ones expounded. Meanwhile our collective history is trashed. We only dare speak out about what is happening in 'safe groups' for fear of retribution and being labelled. My younger self would find it hard to believe I would be describing my experiences of living in the United Kingdom in 2024 in this way. After years of teaching History, of how we won our hard fought freedoms, we are now allowing them to be torn away by the people we put in power.
Thank you Matt indeed. The stats speak for themselves. Perhaps, just perhaps, pressure from the new administration across the pond will bring the uniparty to its senses. Seems to me that is the only glimmer of hope.
In my book, the Tories presided over the immigration disaster. They never fixed the problem, and they made it worse. We were always told that economic competence decided elections. I think now competence over immigration will decide elections. I don't think I can trust the Tories. Obviously Labour are a joke, but so too are the Tories! I think a lot of people feel this way, enough to mean the Tories are unlikely to get back in power for many years, so I think it's all now about the drift of Labour voters to Reform; and the key is competence over immigration, and on that score the Conservatives are tainted and non-credible until all the people are changed and the party changes and I don't expect that will happen. So it's all about immigration and all about Reform. I'd like to hear how any of what I think is wrong and why. Thanks.
I’m getting to the stage where I cant bear thinking about what is happening to this beautiful country, filled mostly with tolerant, open minded people. We are being destroyed by sheer numbers which are undermining all our public services,but worse than that are the numbers of violent criminals we now have here.We, particularly women, are far less safe than when I grew up in the 60s and 70s. The difference is huge. I despise the politicians who have allowed this to happen and the many on the left who have positively encouraged it. They are locking us up for thought crime while real violence and a destruction of our culture is happening all around us and we aren’t even allowed to talk about it.
I should thank you Matt and people like you for at least giving us some hope.
Hear hear! Without people like Matt, it would be a disaster. Thank gos for Substack.
Yes I agree. It makes me so angry hearing the figures and situation being explained so clearly by Matt. Most of all, it makes me extremely sad that we are losing our once great country.
Don't forget the many on the right who have also positively encouraged this too. When faced with a choice between (a) honouring election promises and (b) facilitating record levels of mass migration from countries with which many senior Tory ministers have family links, they chose (b) every time. Perhaps even more than Labour, the modern Tory party champions the politics of race, gender and mass migration.
The Tory party is the most to blame. Of course Blair and Brown set the ball rolling but the Tories had 14 bloody years and did nothing other than relax the rules further.
Tracy: No, the problem goes back much further. When we gave passports to our former colonials in the 1950s all this could have been seen coming.
Absolutely. The Tories did nothing despite repeated promises but it was the left that openly encouraged mass immigration whilst calling us racist for expressing concerns.
Some bright spark once said the only way to make the British stand up is first to bring them to their knees. It is analagous to the grand British military tradition of losing every battle except the last. The enemy is woke left socialism allied with political Islam. It is an unholy alliance of convenience based solely on their shared hatred of Britain's history and Judeo-Christian heritage. The Labour Party, infamously and in the words of Alistair Campbell, does not do God. Neither do many Conservatives. Consequently UK is wide open to subordination to a culture that not only does God but makes politics God's servant such that no compromise is permitted.
Putin's Russia is not the primary threat. He is an opportunist. His provocations, spying, etc continue the pattern established by the old Soviet regime. If he could be sure of no severe retaliation he would take the opportunity to attack but UK in NATO is well guarded against a Russian threat materialising. One thing Russia is not is socialist. That ideology has been adopted in the West without any assistance from Putin's Russia, which rejected it long ago once it learned it could only fail. Too many in the West have still not learned that socialism never works and is always highly damaging, be it communism, fascism or national socialism. Too many excuse its failures by saying it has not been tried properly, so they try harder each time - hence they get more extreme and authoritarian like Starmer's Gang.
Neither has the West yet learned how to deal with the threat of Political Islam. It fails to understand that for Islamists there is no compromise, no surrender, and they really, really do not share Western values. If they have to choose, the vast majority of Muslims will side with their Islamic leaders, not with Western culture.
Mass imigration of cultures antithetical to British culture must be stopped. This threat is existential.
Couldn’t agree more.
Society is glued together by a social contract. Each of us gives up a degree of freedom in return from sharing the mutual benefit. It's two-way and only works if it's a fair trade. The deal is policed by our elected representatives.
Our social contract has broken down.
Matt, once again a great article, but what I ask you are we going to do. This is all part of the globalist plan. Starmer is a WEF disciple, as are all the European leaders with open borders. We, the Uk are target number 1. Bring down our country, bring down our economy and France, Germany, Holland with Spain will fold into line. The WEF NATO structure, the great reset and the one world government will be created. Look what happened to Uk, they will say and see, they left the protection of the Federation, became isolated and were engulfed by the departure that left them outside of the European accord. Left them unprotected and without defence. 2.8m people have signed a petition to oust this Labour debacle. Nothing will happen. With criminals, liars and despots in charge. We are, quite literally, being abused, disavowed and discriminated against. Bankrupt the Uk, you bankrupt us. I keep saying, if you want to control the people take away their money, remove their food and create destitution. Brake our will, remove our freedom. Create, as we were in the 12th century a nation of tide and serviles. Starmer believes that I along with every business owner I know, is not a worker. Farmers are land thieves and Davos is the best place to be. I say send him to Davos with a clear message. The Uk is a sovereign state and you are not welcome.
Every leader since the referendum should be jailed for being a traitor to our country and completely ignoring the wishes of those that elected them.
It started with Blair, continued with Brown and has been perpetuated by Cameron, Boris, Rishi and now Starmer!
Don't forget May who ensured we had a rotten deal from EU.
Mark: There is very little we can do now, its too late to go back. What we can still do, though, is to regain control of the onward march of change to the extent that "we" remain a majority in our country.
There are a couple of things and labour is showing us the way! They have liars, members of parliament who are in positions , based on false information. Reeve lied on her cv. The transport minister has just resigned, a known criminal. Starmer is complicit and will soon be outed as being the man who secured the father of the Southport killers asylum. Has had to install his lover in the House of Lords. Is in some way compromised by Blackrock. Soon all will fallout in to the public domain. No one can hide these lies for forever!
The EU has long been recognised as the prototype and model for one-world government.
Well, we all know who is to blame for this: the Conservatives, and principally Boris Johnson, which means that not only have the idiots destroyed our way of life, but they have left themselves wide-open to attacks from the Labour Party of all people, who can incredibly put all of the blame on the Conservatives, and while reducing the numbers slightly, can claim that they are redressing the situation!
So if we wish to see immigration numbers fall massively, it is obvious that the Conservatives will not do it, as they had their chance and did the opposite and increased the numbers, whilst lying through their teeth. Labour are wedded to immigration and the creation of an Islamic state, as well as being even bigger liars and crooks (if that is possible); so who are we to vote for? Certainly not the LibDems who are also in favour of mass immigration as well as rejoining the EU, so that leaves a plethora of small parties (I like the English Democrats) who are unlikely to ever gain power without PR, which leaves the only viable alternative in Reform. I too share Ben Habib's reservations about Reform, and I am sad that Ben and Nigel could not find a space big enough for both of them, but realistically, Reform are the only opposition, so we may as well give them a shot, particularly with Trump and Musk backing them.
Reform are our best hope right now, but nowhere near radical enough for what our country needs. Mass deportations and completely closed borders are needed for at least 5 years. Reform won't do that.
Reform won’t go that far but they are electable. The fringe loony parties like Homeland that go that far aren’t electable. Just look at the abuse Farage gets from the likes of Sky News or watch him on Question Time next week. He’s still by far our best hope even if he’s not “the full Tommy Robinson”.
The only decent Tory figures in the 20th century were Churchill, Powell and Thatcher. The recent leaders (Cameron, May, Boris, Truss, Sunak, Badenoch) typify how far party has fallen. When you have the means to do something but still can’t do it you are a Dodo. A dodo bird had wings but could not fly. They did not deliver a meaningful Brexit.
The CP are actually more despicable than Labour when it comes to saying one thing and doing another. They are full of Bori (pleural of Boris). Useless, amoral politicians.
Colin: I don't share your optimism. Reform continue to spout nonsense about "pushing the boats back" (rubber dinghies) and drawing comparisons with Australia (rigid hulled boats - not the same at all). They actually haven't got any answers (yet?).I see that without more ado, we have used lasers to bring down the drones over the airports. Use them, along with satellite surveillance, to disable the dinghie from source to shore.
Good thinking. Even if it was possible and I don’t see why not as they say they can hit a £1 coin from 10 miles away, Starmer would drone on adenoidanaly, about “Internashhional Law”, “Our Colleagues in Frawnce” and He’d work out another way to bring them over to keep the supply route open.
Central London was grid locked last night as a convoy Albanians in cars celebrated their national day with a cacophony of horns blaring. The police kettled them around Trafalgar Square causing large traffic jams in all directions. Earlier that day, several hundred Hamas supporters tried to storm the Foreign Office but were held back by police without helmets or riot gear (in contrast to their of handling mainly white English in Whitehall back in the summer protesting about Southport) and the day before there was disorder from Kurds protesting about the arrest of six of them for terrorism offences (echoes of Harehills) and Eritrean factions fought in South East London a couple of months ago and ... and ... and endlessly.
Two years ago over several days Hindus and Muslims set about each other in Leicester. And over decades thousands of young girls were sexually abused in northern towns by mainly Pakistani men with authorities knowingly turning a blind eye (and for which none have been held to account). Last night it was revealed that Jewish enighbourhoods in North London had received leaflets saying they should leave or face being killed. A QC (at the time of the 2017 election) stood in Bradford. He said the main question he faced on the doorstep when canmpaigning was what was his position on Kashmir.
This is modern Britain, identitarian, sectarian Britain. The number of people forming a 'we', who are the soon to be remnants of the historically British 'we', are a diminshing proportion of the people who now live on this island. Demographic trends point to this particular 'we' becoming a minority within a generation or two. The descendants of this historic 'we' are already a minority in many schools and so will render the old 'we' a real minority as they take over over institutions. The other groups of 'we', many living in parallel societies, are not assimilating but celebrating their ties to other countries and cultures.
The scale of the problem, should there ever be a government minded to try and reverse all this, is probably (and I think almost certainly) such as to render it insuperable. It will not be enough to merely reduce immigration. Deportation and remigration will be required. And we won't get that.
Meanwhile, Richard Tice referred to some 20,000 at a recent Tommy Robinson rally as "that lot" with whom he wanted nothing to do with and Farage appears to believe in civic nationalism and not deportations or remigration. Renaud Camus, of 'The Great Replacement', albeit in a French context, exposed the lie of civic nationalism:
"When a veiled woman with a shaky command of our language, entirely ignorant of our culture can say to a native Frenchman with a passionate interest in Roman churches, the finer points of vocabulary and syntax, Montaigne, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Burgundy Wine, and Proust and whose family has for several generations lived in the same little valley of the Vivrais […] “I am just as French as you are”, it follows that being French is nothing"
And so it is being British is nothing if the Libyan immigrant who bombed the Manchester Arena, raised in the "Little Libya" area of Manchester and who took holidays in Libya, the country his family were allegedly refugees from, is also described as British.
On Armistice day last year my wife and I were wearing poppies. Some masked men, dressed us wannabe Hamas fighters, passed us and glanced at our poppies and said "fuckers" illustrating that the 'we' I used to be a member of has gone.
Cancel culture began 56 years ago when a certain politician referred to us "building our own funeral pyre" for which "we must be mad, literally mad".
Our politicians are alert, sort of, at last, to the effect on services of rapid popuation growth out pacing infrastructure, but only so far as it may affect votes for them in the next election. None are talking about the 'we' in any serious way (if at all). It is a problem too difficult to acknowledge politically. In any case, Starmer and Lammy are wedded to the universality of human rights in denial of the culturally specific nature of rights and so to the validity of national cultures. For them there is nothing to defend.
Starmer is not wedded to the universality of human rights, quite the reverse. For Starmer, specified minority groups have rights, so do criminals (like those whose deportation he prevented). But people of the wrong race and social class who were upset by Southport are not considered sufficiently human by Starmer to enjoy human rights.
Starmer's argument was that migrants once here enjoyed rights which the Southport rioters were criminally trying to deny. That's the point about universalism from the left's point of view. It applies to criminals as much as anyone. Univeral Human RIghts specifically denies any privilege to indigenous citizens. We are all fungible.
This is very depressing, but raises an interesting question which I think about a lot - how do you have freedom of speech and expression but also establish the dominance of British culture and customs over foreign?
A government that would ban flags and the practice of customs they don't like, will eventually ban everything they don't like, including dissent.
Statistics are really shocking, but also really useful to rationalise and justify how I feel. Just the sort of statistics you should have the opportunity to share on Question Time! I like your definition of what makes a nation.
But what can we do? I’ve voted and voted, and waited and waited, for promises that never came. We can’t wait another 4 years, there will be nothing left. I think it’s already too late. It’s horrifying to watch this happen and I feel so despondent about the future. This is the only home we have.
Also I would like to see a public discussion about what all these extra millions people (and their children) are going to do once AI and greater automation starts taking more and more jobs, which is going to happen sooner than people think. How is our society going to hold together in the face of this? I think every single politician, business leader and public servant who pushed us into this should be personally tried for treason.
See my comments above, Lucy.
Sorry Lucy, but that is democracy. We chose these people.
We may have chosen them but surely we can't be accountable for the fact they broke all their promises?
The plan has always been to destroy the existing society to bring unrest and then impose population wide control.
Same as the US and elsewhere.
Therefore discussing the intricacies of what’s happening is,as David Martin says, like discussing the make of gun at a shoot out.
It’s irrelevant.
It’s happening and it needs to stop, now.
How? Easy. Direct Democracy a la Switzerland. See my comment on last Sunday's 4 Swiss referendums (above) that DEFEATED 3 Laws already passed by the Swiss government and parliament that the Swiss people were against - and overturned via their Direct Democracy. Why is no UK political party making Direct Democracy their policy platform? The people - YOU and me - want political power. Direct Democracy gives that to us!
Iain - whose plan?
UN ,remarkably.
That of course is in fact under the auspices of the WEF/ CIA
We are being colonised- simple as that.
Just look at Ireland who are further along this road than we are! Notice also that one of the Irish Government's biggest critics, Connor Macgregor, has been nobbled, days before a GE; interesting no? Let's hope that the Irish people vote for an anti-immigrant party.
Yes it was a complete stitch up with Macgregor
Just like Trump and Stormy Daniels, who accepted a payout to keep quiet, and then spilled the beans anyway. Trump and Daniels are both culpable in this infidelity, her as much as him, but for her to do the rounds of news media and claim to be the victim is a bit rich; she knew that Trump was married, yet carried on anyway; it was obvious that she saw a quick romp as a path to riches, and all the more fool Trump for getting involved. I wonder where people keep their brains sometimes!
It all falls into place. Labour is now ranting about immigration (it only took months after criminalising good, decent working people to post on social media), yet clearly in the data, it all started around the time Blair and a Labour-run Government, 1997–2010.
The former year clearly was the initial spike of the increase. All these "public servants" need to be investigated and held to account—all of them for, at the very minimum, inciting violence and conspiracy to commit multiple murders. It's the only profession that seems to be above the law... this needs rectifying. Just because they make them, they should abide by them too!!
Keep up the good fight Matt. You have loads of support and the public have more understanding of these issues.
Hopefully Reform can turn things around or we could borrow Trump for a while before he starts his new job!
Nigel Farage doesn't have the vision or the courage. Ben Habib consistently gets things right.
Ben has left Reform so I have no idea what plans he has for the future.
There are multiple interviews with him. I think Dan Wootton on outspoken asked him. He's not left the fray just taking some time out to consider the way forward.
For Farage to disparage him as "poor old Ben" says a lot. Habib is a million times more educated articulate and perceptive than Farage, which must be a problem for him. He also has more courage and integrity. In my opinion.
One of your best, Matt.
It is extraordinary that in this situation so few people vote for the only party that would stop the insanity: Reform. Is that because they believe it would be a wasted vote in UK's 2-Party FPTP system? Is it because the truth is so well hidden people just don't know? Is it because so many naively believe politicians' promises? Or are people just in despair and see no point in voting at all? I find it hard to understand why anyone would vote Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem but millions, the majority, do. Why? The ghastly truth might be that an extraordinary number of people actually support these policies. If so they would come from the majority who are net beneficiaries of the state, Remainers, Palestine supporters, anti-Semites, the hard Left and Woke who hate UK and free-loading immigrants in UK for the benefits. That's an awful lot of ghastly people.
Or maybe Farage isn’t the leader we need?
Society and culture are a social contract whereby we sacrifice some degree of individual autonomy to be part of our tribe. This is an excellent thoughtful piece Matt. It’s made me think about our society and how that balances against our individual freedoms. Our tribe has over time set rules and conditions which must be followed to allow individuals to be part of that tribe and over time these have become our laws. This has created a stable and generally fair and happy society which gave opportunities to the underprivileged and fought and won against tyranny in two World Wars. What we’ve witnessed over my lifetime since the 1960s is the weakening of those rules as people have joined us from other societies who refuse to give up their individual autonomies and the rules of their tribes and don’t want to be part of our tribe. To them our laws are irrelevant and not to be followed. Instead they either want their laws to sit alongside ours (eg Sharia) or to replace ours (eg Islam becomes the dominant culture). I worry for my children and grandchildren but our dominant culture is being destroyed.
I've just subscribed after weeks of reading your emails Matt. I know my thoughts below are well trailed by you and others, but I had to say something.
The minimum expectation of any government is that it can control its borders. Ours are incapable or, as you suggest, simply unwilling. We are fed an Orwellian Newspeak narrative diminishing our freedom to express thoughts other than the ones expounded. Meanwhile our collective history is trashed. We only dare speak out about what is happening in 'safe groups' for fear of retribution and being labelled. My younger self would find it hard to believe I would be describing my experiences of living in the United Kingdom in 2024 in this way. After years of teaching History, of how we won our hard fought freedoms, we are now allowing them to be torn away by the people we put in power.
Thank you Matt indeed. The stats speak for themselves. Perhaps, just perhaps, pressure from the new administration across the pond will bring the uniparty to its senses. Seems to me that is the only glimmer of hope.
In my book, the Tories presided over the immigration disaster. They never fixed the problem, and they made it worse. We were always told that economic competence decided elections. I think now competence over immigration will decide elections. I don't think I can trust the Tories. Obviously Labour are a joke, but so too are the Tories! I think a lot of people feel this way, enough to mean the Tories are unlikely to get back in power for many years, so I think it's all now about the drift of Labour voters to Reform; and the key is competence over immigration, and on that score the Conservatives are tainted and non-credible until all the people are changed and the party changes and I don't expect that will happen. So it's all about immigration and all about Reform. I'd like to hear how any of what I think is wrong and why. Thanks.