Patrick O'Flynn

Patrick O'Flynn is a British political commentator and journalist, known for his coverage of UK and EU politics. He was formerly a senior member of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and a Member of the European Parliament.

At last.. even the BBC agrees we must debate the perils of immigration

SOMETIMES key moments take place which show the terms of polit­ical trade have changed for good.

INTERROGATOR Newsnight anchorman Jeremy Paxman INTERROGATOR: Newsnight anchorman Jeremy Paxman

Norman Lamont’s Commons declaration that John Major was “in office but not in power” was one, crystallising a growing certainty that Labour would be returning to government at the subsequent election.

Wednesday night saw ­another. The BBC’s flagship programme Newsnight carried a major report on the warning from Cambridgeshire Chief Const­able Julie Spence about the strains immigration is placing upon her county.

Afterwards Jeremy Paxman chaired a live studio debate between Immigration Minister Liam Byrne, Sir Andrew Green, head of the immigration-sceptic think tank MigrationWatch, and Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman.

Previously the debate would have gone as follows: News­night anchorman frequently interrupts Sir Andrew, then allows Labour and Lib Dem to imply he is a Right-wing bigot. Anchor then mildly lambasts the Labour man for sometimes “pandering” to the tabloids. Finally, consensus is reached between the Beeb, Labour and Liberal that immigration is a thoroughly good thing which only racists and “nasty party” types could question.

Its impact is tearing apart the fabric of British society

But that is not what happened. Instead, Mr Paxman listened resp­ectfully to Sir Andrew, whose contributions to the mig­ration debate have always been backed up by research and persuasive argument.

Paxo then reacted with outrage at Sir Andrew’s revelation that 200 houses a day will have to be built in Britain just for new migrants. He pressed Mr Byrne to say when the British people had given their approval for such an influx.

Finally, Sir Andrew was given airtime to expertly demolish Mr Clegg’s crazy plan for an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Ladies and gentlemen, the worm has turned. Even the BBC has now decided it can no longer suppress debate about the many downsides of mass immigration. Now, Mr Paxman is not given to bouts of humil­ity so he did not acknowledge that Newsnight has come to this story rather late.

Nor did he recall an edition of his programme in the summer of 2001 which outrageously attacked this newspaper for daring to put sceptical reports about immigration on its front page. But let us not quibble. Let there instead be joy at the sight of the sinner repenting.

Great things can flow from this breakdown of the self-serving consensus among the metro­politan elite that scorn and damnation should be tipped upon anyone opposed to crude multiculturalism and the uncontrolled inflow of people from all over the world.

Immigration on this hitherto unknown scale has certainly brought BBC and politico types cheaper domestic labour and staffed the fashionable restaurants they dine in. But it has torn apart the fabric of British society. And its impact has become so pervasive and severe that they can no longer deny it. Sometimes it seems as if almost every bad news story in Britain today is a consequence of uncontrolled immigration and the failure to challenge incomers to adopt the British way of life.

Take the Commiss­ion for Racial Equality’s warning that Britain is becoming an increasingly segregated society, or the latest “honour killing” trial, or the warnings about the activities of child traffickers and of Africans who torture children they believe to be possessed by evil spirits (Victoria Climbie RIP).

Look at the rising levels of TB and HIV in our major cities or the terrible human toll from Britain’s new and largely imported knife culture. Look at the murders committed by Somali psychopaths who have abused our asylum system to live among us (Sharon Beshen­ivsky, Kiyan Prince RIP). Consider the Islamist terrorist threat (RIP the dead from 7/7).

In his book Bowling Alone, Left-wing US academic Robert Putnam has charted the corrosive impact that high levels of ethnic diversity and multiculturalism can have on community values. Areas with lots of distinct groups lack community cohesion, he found. Levels of trust are lower and the public realm becomes degraded.

We can see this process happening in Britain’s major towns and cities. People feel that they have become strangers in the streets where they were born. Those engaged in “white flight” to the suburbs and villages should not be castigated as racists but understood as ­people who simply want to enjoy a strong community spirit themselves and instil it in their children.

None of this is to say that immigration cannot bring benefits to our society. But for it to do so we need to be firmly in control of both the quantity and the quality of new arrivals and to provide them with a strong impetus to integrate.

None of this is the case at the moment.

Thankfully, there are signs that the Government is beginning to shake itself free of the constraints of political correctness on this issue. Mr Byrne has been as firm as Sir Andrew Green in opposing an amnesty for illegals, saying they should be sent home rather than to the front of the queue for houses and benefits. But saying these things is one thing, delivering upon them is something else.

Previous Tory leaders such as William Hague and Michael Howard might have done so had they not been smeared as nasty extremists by the BBC during election campaigns. The Beeb will not be able to get away with that in future.

But the Tories are now led by someone who decided that immigration should not be treated as a major issue. Have David Cameron and his Notting Hill set snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by opting into an obsolete Left-wing consensus?

What an irony it would be if the greatest beneficiary of the BBC’s new questioning attitude towards mass immigration was the suddenly tough-talking Labour Party which masterminded it all along.

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