Is the government lying to us about immigration, lying to itself, or do they just think we’re stupid?

Are they lying to us, lying to themselves, or do they just think we’re all stupid?

I have often felt the need to ask this question about our politicians, and especially about the issue of immigration.

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It has been a major political battleground for decades and there are no signs that peace will be declared anytime soon.

Yesterday we got the latest official immigration statistics for the past year.

I could give you dozens of figures right now, but this is a good summary of the situation: A LOT of people from abroad come to this country to live, work and study here.

It’s true that the numbers are down slightly on the previous year, but the figures are still far higher than in 2019, when Boris Johnson was famously elected to “get Brexit done” – and that was three long years after 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU and regain control over our laws and, crucially, our borders.

Every prime minister in recent years has promised to reduce immigration. And they have all failed. Some have not even bothered to pretend they were trying.

I’m old enough to remember David Cameron promising to reduce net immigration to the “tens of thousands”. Simpler, happier times, eh?

Today, that number is in the hundreds of thousands. Over the past three years, more than a million people have arrived from abroad each year.

All this did not happen by chance.

Each time it was a conscious political choice by the elected government of the day, whether it was Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of Labour opening the doors to half of Eastern Europe, or David Cameron and his Tory successors opening the doors even wider to the rest of the world.

Then why did they do it when they had promised not to?

Was it to artificially increase GDP (the more people there are, the more production there will be) or to fill the gaps in the labor market that the current population refuses to fill? Or simply because so many members of our political elite are convinced that you are a NICE person if you advocate open borders?

Did they think we wouldn’t notice? That they would just smuggle in millions more people and we would all just carry on as before in one big multicultural melting pot?

Oh, then we would simply have to compete for jobs with the newcomers, which would drive down wages, while the extra demand for housing would drive up rents and house prices.

And did they think we don’t have enough talented Britons who could train as doctors or nurses and work in the NHS, rather than importing them from poorer countries where their services are often much more needed?

‘There’s nothing to see here!’

Have London’s metropolitan elite simply been too busy enjoying their endless supply of cheap imported nannies, cleaners and gardeners – not to mention that nice barista in the coffee shop – to notice the impact on the rest of the world?

Apparently so, but it is impossible for ANYONE not to notice the influx of illegal migrants, who risk their lives day in, day out on rickety boats across the Channel and end up on the waiting list for our asylum procedure year in, year out.

In the latest in a series of government promises that will not be kept, Keir Starmer has vowed to “destroy” people-smuggling gangs.

I don’t want to give away the ending of this Netflix special, but — spoiler alert — he won’t.

Nor will he “significantly” cut LEGAL immigration, on top of what is already planned thanks to Rishi Sunak’s late changes to student and work visas and the fall in arrivals from Ukraine and Hong Kong.

And to make matters worse, we hear that Labour ministers are considering a deal with the EU to allow people under 30 to travel freely between the EU and the UK, allowing them to live and work where they want.

They will continue to do exactly the same thing they have done in recent decades: import millions more people.

Julia Hartley-Brewer

“There’s nothing to see here!” we are told.

After all, what could possibly go wrong when most young Europeans speak English as a second language and many of them face sky-high youth unemployment at home?

The great and the good will continue to tell us that tackling mass immigration is a high priority and that the numbers will drop.

Then they will simply continue with what they have been doing for the past decades: importing millions more people to our already overcrowded coasts.

And at the next election they will make the same promises again.

Let’s return to the question I began with: Are they lying to us and to themselves, or do they just think we’re all stupid?

I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that it must be all three.

Louise pushes us to the limit

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CAR DRIVERS have become the country’s money lender as government and local authorities come up with new tricks every day to squeeze more money out of car owners.

Now Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has backed councils in making decisions on road safety schemes, such as 30km/h zones, in their areas.

Of course it is sensible to reduce the speed on quiet residential streets and near schools, but in my neighbourhood the 32 km/h limit also applies on a major six-lane motorway!

We are told this will save lives and reduce pollution. But really it is just about raising money by fining motorists for driving 23 mph. Man, why don’t we just lock them up and throw away the key to their heinous crime?

Wouldn’t it make more sense for people who don’t like cars to move to a beautiful island in the Outer Hebrides, where they can walk from one end of the island to the other every day without having to worry about drivers?