Dave's immigration woes are of his own making

A more cunning prime minister would have been able to boast about today’s immigration figures. ‘Look’, he would say, ‘our economy is on the up, more people are in work than ever before and more of those jobs are going to hardworking Britons.

‘With careful handling of our finances, we have begun the task of tackling the economic disaster we inherited, saved it from the abyss and now we are focusing on securing the economy.

‘On top of all of this, people from across Europe are now flocking to our shores, seeing us as a place of security, of resilience, of vitality, coming here eager to work and build our economy, helping to secure the prosperity that we all want.’

But whatever he is, David Cameron is not a cunning prime minister. Playing the anti-immigration card is an easy election ploy, especially in the midst of the deepest recession for a century. It pleases his backbenchers and taps into the public’s unease; providing voters with a more realistic immigration policy was never really on the cards.

So, instead, as more net migration hits more than 212,000, David Cameron’s pledge to reduce this to below 100,000 looks completely unachievable and it will be for others, UKIP and his increasingly restless backbenchers, to take the spoils.

It was ever going to be thus. The largest number of migrants coming to this country come from the European Union and the government has practically no power to restrict this movement (the restrictions that did limit Romanian and Bulgarian migration lifted at the start of this year). The prime minister can talk as much as he wants about renegotiating our relationship with Europe but this isn’t going to make any significant progress before the next election.

The government know this is happening. In an interview published this week in Total Politics magazine, David Willetts, minister for universities and science, while claiming there was a surge of students from China, admitted the curbs had ‘played disappointingly badly’ in India with numbers falling by 38 per cent between 2011 and 2012.

So it leaves the government vulnerable from all sides on immigration. Those who believe in the free movement of people and think immigration has and continues to enrich Britain attack the government for harming universities with their restrictions and deterring people who could contribute. While anti-immigration voices and those on the right, from MigrationWatch and UKIP, shout louder about leaving the EU and call for stricter controls to be introduced.

And everyone, in unison, can accuse the government of losing control of their own policy.

Pulling their last pint?

One night the barman at the pub at the bottom of my road was still pulling pints; the next morning he had gone.

Steel shutters were stapled securely to windows and doors, each pinned with notices warning any would-be trespassers to stay clear. A few weeks later the site has been sold, to whom no one knows. and what will happen to this once thriving community pub remains a mystery. Read more

When is a resignation not a resignation?

I’m aware it’s not the biggest political story of the day, what with publisher Iain Dale’s comical sumo bout with a veteran anti-nuclear protester (speech, what speech?) but good old Godfrey Bloom from Ukip has succeeded once again in putting smiles on faces. Read more

Will we be saying 'never again' once more? Part two

* This is an update to an article first published by Metro here

Taking a moral stance, no matter how flawed and imperfect it may be, is sometimes easier than negotiating murky political waters. Being prepared to engage militarily with a state which has used chemical weapons against its own people is the right thing to do; but rushing headlong into such a campaign while the truth of such a heinous attack has not been established as surely as possible would be reckless and a significant failure of leadership.

Understandably David Cameron wanted to be decisive over the Syrian attack. He rushed back from holiday while Nick Clegg cancelled a trip to Afghanistan, where he was due to cheer up our lads on the front. It was fairly clear the recall of parliament was inevitable. And for days, the signals emanating from the government have been that MPs would be expected to decide whether to back armed assault on Bashar al-Assad and his military. And such action could even begin by the weekend.

This is no longer the case. Weapons inspectors on the ground are still trying to verify what actually happened in the Ghouta region, east of Damascus last week. They will not apportion blame. It seems almost certain a nerve gas attack launched by the Syrian regime is to blame; but, while UN inspectors will apportion no blame, it's worth waiting a few days for confirming details.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said inspectors needed four more days on the ground and the Labour opposition indicated it would not support an attack on Syria unless inspectors were given more time.

Some, bizarrely, started to claim Labour were behaving deceitfully and playing politics with a critical situation; but very quickly, once people gave it a moment's thought, waiting a few days seemed an eminently sensible thing to do. Not waiting for the report from UN weapons inspectors did Tony Blair's government no good as they rushed headlong into invading Iraq.

So now we are left with something of an oddity; MPs are returning tomorrow to express their outrage at events in Syria, agree a humanitarian response is necessary and that 'legal, proportionate' military action may be required. 

The motion criticises the UN for its inaction over the horrors of Syria and calls for necessary time to be given to inspectors to carry out their work.

Only the most pacifist will find a word in the document to complain about. Tomorrow's debate and vote has gone from something critical into a pointless charade; there will be no British involvement in action against Syria without a further parliamentary vote.

Full clarity is unlikely to emerge. We will only ever think we know that Assad's regime was responsible for the awful attack. But unless significant doubt is raised about the identity of the perpetrator, we still must take a stand. Our values remain unmoved. Finding political excuses to avoid taking responsibility now will only lead to regret later. 

Godfrey Bloom tries to shock, SHOCK

The outrage that has greeted Godfrey Bloom’s ‘bongo bongo land’ comments is understandable – though his remarks will come as no surprise to anyone who has paid the slightest interest in his career.

His casually racist comments follow a litany of similarly unpleasant and dim asides which have pockmarked his political life. Bloom is an attention seeker who pops up like a whack-a-mole puppet, equipped with opinions – frequently underpinned by heroic levels of ignorance – on often difficult subjects, consistently reducing conversations to levels which normally occur only after a few pints. Read more

Agar demonstrates the joy of Test cricket

A cry of anguish spread round the office as Australia’s number 11 Ashton Agar holed out just two runs away from an extraordinary debut test century.

Picked ostensibly for his bowling – a left-arm spinner, perhaps just to target Kevin Pietersen – Agar’s performance and position at the end of the innings appears to demonstrate Australia know as little about this cricketer as everyone else. Read more 

Struggling for policies? Blame an immigrant

Today has been the coalition’s ‘Bash an Immigrant’ day. Every government has them though this administration indulges more than most. They occur when ministers run out of ideas, are listless, searching for a purpose, fail to find one and resort to easy, headbanging, tabloid pleasing measures which might be good short-term politics but are completely pointless and prime examples of bad government. And the coalition has excelled itself, presenting the country with two useless policies before breakfast.

Read more

Afghan interpreters deal a shabby cop-out

Nick Clegg said today that Britain had a ‘moral duty’ to provide resettlement assistance to Afghan interpreters who had put the lives of themselves and their families at risk to work for British forces as they battled against the Taliban.

Less than an hour later, the details of the resettlement deal became apparent and only those who were employed by the British government on December 19, 2012, would be eligible for resettlement to the UK. (Metro link) 

This means that about 600 of the 1,200 who assisted British forces will be excluded from escaping the country, regardless of what current danger they may face.

The deal unveiled in a written statement to the House of Commons - the preferred method to release anything slightly dishonourable – by defence secretary Philip Hammond is not much use to ‘Mohammed’, a 35-year-old man who spent three years working for British forces in Helmand province between 2006 and 2009 and has not left his Kabul home in months due to threats to his life.

My colleague interviewed him last week and he told how his seven-year-old daughter was stopped by a man on a motorcycle who handed her a threat vowing to kill her ‘infidel’ father. ‘Even in the presence of British and US troops we don’t feel safe,’ he told Metro. ‘Next year, when they’re gone, will be much worse. We and our families are all in danger.

‘David Cameron has talked about our safety but all the interpreters are really worried. We feel we’re being abandoned to the Taliban.’

It is known that 21 translators who worked with British forces have been killed since 2001 and Mohammed quit after his friend vanished, kidnapped by the Taliban.

It’s a fine sentiment from Mr Hammond that these clearly capable people should be encouraged to remain in Afghanistan to help rebuild the country after decades of conflict. And where it is possible it should of course be done and the package assembled by the government is pretty generous. But it’s clear in many cases this simply won’t be possible. They will be trapped, threatened by those who will inevitably occupy the power vacuum when Western forces leave, and abandoned by those whom they once served.

By way of comparison, after the Iraq War interpreters were offered far more generous terms. They could either receive one-off financial aid or exceptional indefinite leave to remain in the UK with help to relocate. Or they had the opportunity to resettle through Britain’s Gateway programme, run with the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees.

Quite why the government is refusing to do its duty by these brave individuals and offer the same terms is unclear. Tim Farron, president of the Liberal democrats, who raised the issue in parliament this morning, told me there is ‘some resistance within the MoD’. He added: ‘They saw this differently to Iraq and wanted a different outcome.’ He has said he will continue pressing the matter.

And the campaign group Avaaz, which has been at the forefront of the interpreter’s campaign, described Hammond’s announcement as ‘half-baked’. Alex Wilks, the campaign director, said: ‘This deal may sound great in London but could be lethal in Kabul.

‘Today’s Afghan proposal remains half-baked and does not offer the escape route that Iraqi translators received.’

But truly, it’s worse than half-baked. It’s a shabby failure by a government which is refusing to live up to its responsibilities.

These killers represent no one but themselves

Since the heinous act of savagery on London’s streets on Wednesday afternoon, Muslims and their community leaders could not have been more explicit; the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby just yards from Woolwich Barracks has been condemned in the clearest possible terms. (Metro link)

The Muslim Council of Great Britain called it a ‘truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam’. Paul Salahuddin Armstrong, of The Association of British Muslims, said the attackers’ actions had ‘removed them from Islam, because there is no grounds to justify attacks of terrorism’.

‘If you go back to the Qu’ran,’ he explained, ‘there is no grounds for this kind of behaviour, no grounds for murder.’

And countless individuals have used Twitter to express their disgust and outrage, frequently accompanied by the hashtag #notinmyname.

It is a shame they feel they have to defend themselves at all. It should be obvious that the actions of a couple of mindless, violent individuals owe nothing to any religion. David Cameron was absolutely right when he spoke outside Downing Street, saying this murder was a ‘betrayal of Islam’, its perpetrators were ‘trying to divide us’ and the best response was for everyone to go about their ‘normal lives’.

Yet, the prime minister and leader of the opposition both cut short trips abroad to return to the country; we’ve already had two meetings of the government’s emergency Cobra committee and 1,200 extra police have been deployed on London’s streets to apparently provide a reassuring presence.

Obviously security measures need to be reviewed and the wider context of the crime must be explored. But, it is not a surprise to see significant figures in the defence industry waste no time in calling for the adoption of further, more intrusive, data-monitoring measures, regardless of whether they would have made the slightest difference to the events in Woolwich.

Too often, since 9/11, we have seen our civil liberties eroded, justified by short-term and shallow excuses, when those liberties should have been reinforced and celebrated to demonstrate to the perpetrators of terror they have failed.

‘ Fundamentalist Islam’ is as much a political movement as it is a religious one and like any extremist ideology it appeals to the weak, the disaffected and the vulnerable. It provides them with easy, convenient, excuses for their own failings whilst, at the same time, offering them a scenario through which they can become heroes. Inflicting extreme, mediaeval, violence, is presented as self-sacrificial virtue.

And I fear trying to explain the murder of a British soldier on a suburban street in broad daylight as a terror attack potentially plays into the hands of extremists, too neatly fitting their warped agenda.

Instead, they should be recognised as barbaric killers, pure and simple, not putative martyrs. They may believe they can justify their actions using some twisted ideological theory, but there is no reason why we should give this nonsense such credence.