As far as the British media goes – national and local – the default value for immigration seems to be a determination to present it as an unalloyed good, with relentlessly positive coverage on its advantages.
From the likes of the Guardian and other left-wing organs, we get an endless drumbeat, celebrating the diversity that results from such immigration, matched by laments about any measures which might impact on the flow of “people of colour” into the country.
Rarely are we allowed to see the downside, and when publicity becomes inescapable, the obvious conclusions are rarely drawn.
With the Office for Budget Responsibility contradicting Sunak’s promise that he will reduce immigration overall, though, predicting that net migration will settle at 245,000 a year in the long term, we now have what seems to be the unusual coincidence of three comment pieces, respectively in the Telegraph and The Times challenging the conventional wisdom on the issue.
The first, by Camilla Tominey – one of the Telegraph’s associate editors – takes on the issue full-frontal, in a piece headed: “Britain is addicted to mass migration – and it is not racist to say this must change”, the sub-heading telling us: “Politicians haven’t just lost control of the Channel: the huge scale of legal immigration is being allowed to continue with little scrutiny”.
Tominey starts as she means to go on, declaring that there was something “horribly ironic” about Lineker’s claiming to “speak up for those poor souls who have no voice” on the question of immigration, after effectively trying to silence dissenters with comparisons to 1930s Germany.