Nigel Jones: Our country’s immigration problems can no longer be ignored

Nigel Jones is a writer, historian and journalist.

Even the BBC can’t ignore it now.

Twice recently the corporation’s early evening TV news had to lead on stories that they would much rather forget. Last Wednesday, the top story was the government’s inability or unwillingness to get their rape gangs inquiry off the ground, or even find a biddable stooge to chair it.

This was followed in the running order by the news that an illegal Iranian Channel crosser, deported to France under the government’s farcical but much trumpeted ‘one in one out’ scheme, had reentered the country by the same route after just 29 days away.

Then on Friday, the 6pm News led with the breaking story that Ethiopian Hadush Kebatu, another illegal migrant, convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl near the Bell Hotel in Epping, had been ‘accidentally’ freed from HMP Chelmsford instead of being deported. Kebatu’s offence had sparked protests in Essex and elsewhere by parents demanding the closure of the Bell and other hotels housing migrants for fear of what the inmates might do to their children.

The next featured story was the trial for the horrific murder of hotel receptionist Rhiannon Whyte, 27, the mother of a six year old child, of Sudanese migrant Deng Chol Majek, who was staying at the Walsall hotel where Rhiannon worked, three months after entering the country on a small boat. Majek had followed Rhiannon to a rail station where he stabbed her 23 times in the head with a screwdriver. The killer had then danced a jig in apparent delight after his ‘vicious and frenzied’ assault. Sentence on this animal after his conviction has been delayed until his age can be determined by tests of his bone density. He claims to be 19 but is believed to be 27.

What do all four of these news stories have in common? They are all linked with the ‘I’ word, what Suella Braverman rightly called the ‘invasion’ of our country by tens of thousands of undocumented illegal foreign migrants, often from countries and cultures totally at variance with, and hostile to the ‘British values’ that we hold dear. This unwanted invasion amounts to the biggest shift in this land’s demographics since the Norman Conquest.

Not a single day goes by now without some negative story about immigration hitting the airwaves or social media. Often such stories involve atrocious crimes against innocents such as the slaughter of Rhiannon Whyte. In days gone by, such an outrage would have sparked a national wave of revulsion and revolt against those whose policies have permitted these horrors to occur, but such is the softening of the national spine and the blunting of our moral conscience that we may murmur our dismay but won’t do anything more concrete to prevent them.

A less noticed story this week was the bald fact that the number of those who have entered the country illegally via the small boats this year, 37,000, has just passed last year’s total. The influx makes a hollow mockery of the government’s pledge to “smash the gangs” organising the invasion, and the millions of pounds they are paying to President Macron’s floundering regime to stop or slow the flow.

The prime duties of any government, is to defend the realm from its enemies, and protect its citizens from harm. The current government is manifestly failing on both counts and as the opinion polls and by elections show us, people are beginning to wake up and take notice.

In normal times, the main opposition party would benefit from such a gigantic governmental failure, but these are no longer normal times. The dream of a harmonious multicultural society is dead and sadly the Conservatives helped to kill it by unthinkingly  adopting the left-wing and liberal agenda that has so demonstrably brought this disaster to pass.

As Halloween approaches, those who express alarm over the issue that is now dominating politics – surpassing even our economic woes – will be accused by the left of ‘demonising’ all immigrants. They should be ignored, as all too often – as poor Rhiannon discovered, some of these people are real demons.

The writing is now not only on the wall for the two old governing parties but is racing towards them with sirens screaming and red lights flashing. If they don’t take heed and do something to escape the colossal catastrophe that they have created they shouldn’t be surprised that people try someone and something else.