Immigration

In the space of about one month a further 9 per cent of the electorate has decided that the views of Reform UK accord with their own take on the world, putting Nigel Farage’s party well ahead of the government in the polls and leaving the Conservatives trailing Ed Davey’s cavalcade of grinning village idiots. The Greens are not that far behind the Tories, either, on 10 per cent. This means that policies which were once considered extreme, such as the immediate joyous jettisoning of all that diversity, equality and inclusion rubbish and drastic action taken against asylum seekers, are now considered acceptable by almost a third of the electorate.

The facade of Garden Court Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is reassuringly traditional. The barristers who work there occupy buildings which were once home to the Earl of Sandwich and the Tory prime minister Spencer Perceval. If there were any building in London in which wigs and gowns would seem a natural form of dress, it would be here. But the facade is just that. For behind the pedimented Georgian windows there operates arguably the most radically effective cell of left-wing activists in Britain. Barristers are supposed to adhere to the cab-rank principle: they act for the first client who comes calling. Many of Garden Court’s lawyers, however, though they

Whatever you think of the blizzard of executive orders howling from the White House, at least the new President doesn’t succumb to the seductive gravitational pull of the status quo. This is therefore a fitting juncture at which to not simply think outside the box, but in some cases to chuck the box. For example, Donald Trump wants to chuck the US Department of Education. Yet can’t he set his sights higher? Like, set an example for the rest of the West: chuck the asylum system. Having long ago predicted that the subject would dominate this century, I’ve written about immigration for 35 years. Although repeatedly approaching the radioactive issue

It is always interesting to watch the debates that roil a nation. So far as I can see, the current debate in parliament mainly consists of trying to work out whether the NHS is competent enough to kill people or not. This week one of our greatest Home Office ministers – Jess Phillips MP – was asked about the question of ‘assisted dying’. She said that, naturally, she is in favour of this ‘progressive’ policy. But one qualm held back her support. In Phillips’s estimation the NHS is ‘not in a fit enough state’ at present to kill patients on demand. Many people whose family members have gone through the

Arch rivals Justin Welby served longer as Archbishop of Canterbury than any of his four immediate predecessors, but others have served far longer. The longest since the Reformation was Randall Davidson, who held the position between 1903 and 1928, when he retired aged 80 – becoming the first not to die in post. Before the reformation, several Archbishops served stints of nearly three decades, but none so long as Thomas Bourchier, who was Archbishop between 1454 and 1486. Another long-serving Archbishop was St Dunstan, who held the post between 959 and 988, surviving to the age of around 80 in spite of having been beaten, bound and thrown into a

If you tuned into the Tory party leadership race, you will have heard rather a lot about the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Robert Jenrick wants Britain to leave because it stops us deporting foreign criminals. Kemi Badenoch argues that leaving won’t fix our immigration woes. She’s not wrong. Of the 144,200 people who have arrived on small boats since the start of the crisis in 2018, just 3,788 have been returned. That’s despite the fact that, according to the left-leaning charity the Refugee Council, some 40 per cent of people who come to the UK this way are not refugees. If you apply that rather liberal calculation to