Politics
Keir Starmer welcomes fall of Assad’s ‘barbaric regime’ and aims to ‘restore stability’ in Syria and provide ‘essential aid’
Sir Keir Starmer has welcomed the fall of Bashar Assad’s “barbaric regime” in Syria, following a dramatic rebel takeover of Damascus.
The development marks an unprecedented shift in Syria’s political landscape, with the Prime Minister calling for the restoration of peace and stability in the region.
“The Syrian people have suffered under Assad’s barbaric regime for too long and we welcome his departure,” the Prime Minister said in response to the weekend’s events.
A lightning rebel offensive seized control of Damascus overnight on Sunday, with President Assad reportedly fleeing the country.
Starmer released a statement following the removal of Assad
PA
The UK Government had taken preemptive action, evacuating British citizens over the weekend before the situation reached crisis point.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner confirmed the Foreign Office had implemented an evacuation plan ahead of the weekend’s developments.
The exact number of UK nationals evacuated from Syria has not been disclosed by officials.
The Prime Minister called on all sides to protect civilians and ensure essential aid can reach those most vulnerable in Syria.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Assad has fled Syria
Reuters
“Our focus is now on ensuring a political solution prevails, and peace and stability is restored,” Starmer stated.
The government is working closely with regional partners and monitoring the situation, describing recent developments as “unprecedented.”
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), currently the leading insurgent group in Syria, remains a banned organisation in the UK.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner expressed caution about Syria’s future direction, noting that while “Assad wasn’t exactly good to the Syrian people,” the country should not move in a radical direction.
Syrian rebels took Damascus during the overnight hours
Getty
“Dictatorship and terrorism creates problems for the people of Syria, who have faced so much already, and also destabilises the region,” Rayner said.
Politics
Keir Starmer branded a ‘very dangerous man’ as PM raises ‘authoritarian’ fears with protest crackdown
Political commentator Aaron Bastani has issued a stark warning about Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, describing him as a “very, very dangerous man” who could quickly become “authoritarian”.
Speaking on GB News, Bastani expressed deep concerns about potential restrictions on protest rights under Starmer’s leadership.
“I think he’s a very, very dangerous man and I think he’d be a very authoritarian man very quickly,” Bastani said.
The commentator warned that attempts to criminalise protest could lead down a “slippery slope”.
Aaron Bastani is fearful of Keir Starmer cracking down on protests
GB NEWS / PA
The warning comes amid recent protests in London that saw significant police intervention.
Just days ago, 77 protesters were arrested during a pro-Palestine demonstration in central London.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Pro-Palestine protesters have taken to the streets of London PAThe Metropolitan Police said the arrests followed “a coordinated effort to breach Public Order Act conditions and cause serious disruption to Londoners”.
The demonstration, which took place on the eve of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, was confined to a static rally in Whitehall after police rejected the organisers’ initially proposed route.
It marked the largest number of arrests at such rallies since they began in October 2023.
Bastani defended the fundamental importance of protest rights, regardless of political stance.
The matter was discussed on GB News
GB NEWS
“The right to protest is only meaningful if it applies to people you disagree with,” he told GB News.
He pointed to recent farmers’ protests as an example of positive democratic expression.
“If you look at the recent farmers’ protest, that was really powerful and positive in many ways to see so many people from around the country protesting their point of view and their rights at the heart of Government,” he said.
He stressed that protest rights shouldn’t be limited only to those whose views align with the authorities.
Bastani warned that restrictions on pro-Palestinian protesters could set a concerning precedent.
“If he’s doing this to Palestinian protesters, who do you think is next?” he questioned.
The political commentator emphasised that protecting fundamental rights was crucial for everyone.
“I think everybody should care deeply about the rights of free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of protest, because it won’t stop here if this man is given a free hand,” he said.
His comments highlight growing tensions between protest rights and public order enforcement in the capital.
Politics
Kwasi Kwarteng accuses Liz Truss of desperate attempt to stay relevant in brutal swipe at former ally: ‘Pathetic!’
Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has branded Liz Truss’s appearance at Donald Trump’s inauguration as “pathetic” and “regrettable”.
Speaking on GB News, Kwarteng accused his former boss of attempting to “stay relevant” by attending the Washington DC event.
The ex-Chancellor took particular aim at those who previously held office but have lost their Commons seats, suggesting they were trying to “borrow Trump’s image”.
“These aren’t people who are Trump all the way”, Kwarteng said, drawing a contrast with figures like Nigel Farage who he noted had genuinely backed Trump since 2016.
Kwasi Kwarteng hit out at his former ally
X / LIZ TRUSS / GB NEWS
Truss travelled to Washington DC ahead of Trump’s inauguration, posing for a photo wearing a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap.
The former prime minister posted on social media platform X: “In DC. The Donald Trump term can’t come soon enough. The West needs it.”
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Donald Trump became the 47th president of the United States
Reuters
The inauguration itself has faced last-minute changes due to expected freezing weather, significantly reducing attendance numbers.
While wealthy and influential figures are guaranteed seats at the event, it remains unclear whether Truss will be among those attending the ceremony in person.
Kwarteng specifically criticised Truss’s political transformation, noting her shift from being a Remainer to a Trump supporter.
“Liz Truss was a Remainer and has now morphed into a Brexit, Trump supporter”, he said on GB News.
Kwasi Kwarteng spoke to Martin Daubney on GB News
GB NEWS
He dismissed her Washington connections, stating: “She obviously has friends in Washington but trying to use this as a way of staying relevant I think is regrettable.”
The former Chancellor expressed particular disdain for ex-government members, “some of them Remainers, turning up to the inauguration”, adding bluntly: “Give me a break. These guys are trying to get in the limelight.”
Truss’s Washington appearance comes after she lost her parliamentary seat in the recent general election.
Her trip has sparked widespread mockery on social media, with critics drawing parallels between her appearance and Paddington Bear due to her red hat and blue coat combination.
The ridicule follows recent controversy where Truss sent a “cease and desist” letter to Keir Starmer over his comments about her crashing the economy.
The New European magazine commented: “Many people thought Liz Truss couldn’t embarrass herself further. But they seriously underestimated her on that front.”
Her 44-day tenure as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister ended following the fallout from her disastrous mini-Budget.
Politics
Keir Starmer’s decision to blame Amazon for Axel Rudakubana failings is ‘puzzling’, Mendoza claims
The head of a leading think tank has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of going down a “bizarre rabbit hole” of blame in his response to the Southport attack case.
Alan Mendoza, Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society, told GB News he was “puzzled” by Starmer’s approach to the failings that led to Axel Rudakubana’s deadly rampage.
Politics
Trump’s budget pick is famous for defying Congress. GOP senators want to confirm him anyway.
Senate Republicans are eager to seat the man who could undercut their funding power.
As President Donald Trump boldly defies the will of Congress by issuing executive orders freezing billions of dollars in federal cash that lawmakers have approved in recent years, Senate Republicans are still speaking accolades of Russ Vought, the president’s pick for White House budget director and the man famous for withholding government money during Trump’s first administration.
Key committee chairs are predicting that the Senate will confirm Vought without issue to head the Office of Management and Budget again, even as some GOP senators raise concern about protecting Congress’ “power of the purse” — granted under Article I of the Constitution — from presidential overreach.
“I think all of us are going to vote for you,” Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham told Vought on Wednesday, as the nominee testified before the South Carolina Republican’s committee in his second public vetting this month.
“Bottom line is, I think you’re qualified for the job. I know why he picked you,” Graham said of Trump’s selection of Vought. “And again, we just had an election. And when you win, you get to pick people. And I’m glad he picked you.”
Loyally confirming Trump’s desired budget director amid the new president’s sweeping funding pause would immediately strengthen the White House’s ability to pick and choose what cash to spend, shirking the spending laws congressional Republicans have voted to enact and calling into question the soundness of any bills they clear in the future.
Notably, Vought would not promise Wednesday to avoid circumventing impoundment law, which is meant to block presidents from withholding money Congress has previously passed through the Congressional appropriations process.
Federal watchdogs concluded that Vought and other Trump administration officials violated impoundment law several times during Trump’s first term, including the freezing of aid to Ukraine that helped fuel Trump’s impeachment in 2019.
But Vought said the executive orders Trump issued within hours of taking office Monday are simply “programmatic delays” or “pauses,” explaining they are meant “to ensure that the funding that is in place is consistent and moves in a direction along the lines of what the president ran on.”
While Vought vowed to “faithfully uphold the law” if confirmed, he noted that Trump disagrees with the Impoundment Control Act enacted more than 50 years ago to insulate the congressional appropriations process from executive branch meddling.
“The president ran on the notion that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional. I agree with that,” Vought said, further insisting that “what the president has unveiled already are not impoundments.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the Budget Committee’s top Democrat, told Vought on Wednesday he was “deeply disturbed” with his answers.
“Congress makes the law, not the president,” said Merkley. “The fact that you continue to advocate for this impoundment strategy, that is completely in violation of our Constitution.”
Under the far-reaching orders Trump issued after he was inaugurated on Monday, federal agencies are now being forced to pause funding from Democrats’ signature climate and spending law called the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as from the bipartisan infrastructure package Republicans helped enact in 2021.
Foreign assistance is also on hold for 90 days, including to Ukraine and Israel as the two U.S. allies are in the midst of wars.
Not every Republican is giving Vought a total free pass. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — which also has jurisdiction over the OMB director nomination and held its own confirmation hearing with Vought last week — said he didn’t think a president should have the power to use government funding differently than how lawmakers have dictated in the bills they pass.
“The power of the purse is Congress,” Paul said during that hearing. “I think if we appropriate something for a cause, that’s where it’s supposed to go. And that will still be my position.”
Nonetheless, less than a week later, Paul led Republicans on his committee to approve Vought’s nomination, stating, “There is no doubt he will be swiftly confirmed.”
An SAS veteran has hit out at Labour’s decision to hit grieving families of military workers with inheritance tax from April 2027.
The money given to families of deceased Armed Forces members, called death in service payments, may be subject to a hefty cut after Labour MPs voted in favour of a raid.
Politics
Kemi Badenoch ‘wastes PMQs AGAIN’ after failing to quiz Starmer over Axel Rudakubana murders
Kemi Badenoch has seemingly missed an opportunity to grill Sir Keir Starmer on the failings surrounding Axel Rudakubana’s horrific killings last summer.
The Prime Minister, who vowed not to leave a stone unturned in an inquiry into the Southport murders, might have expected Badenoch to take aim over a number of issues raised by other Conservative colleagues, including Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick.
But speaking in the House of Commons, Badenoch said: “I also know that the thoughts of many will be with the victims of the Southport killings.
“There are important questions to answer and I will return to those after the case is concluded.”
Badenoch missed an opportunity to grill Starmer on the failings surrounding Axel Rudakubana’s horrific killings last summer
PARLIAMENTLIVE.TV
Badenoch continued by instead opting to quiz Starmer on Labour’s education reforms.
Ahead of the Leader of the Opposition’s first intervention, the Prime Minister also addressed the Southport killings.
He said: “We will change the law so that the most serious offenders attend their sentencing hearings.”
In response to the exchange, Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice argued it was “unreal” that Badenoch had not probed Starmer on a topic other than education.
MORE ON KEMI BADENOCH:
Starmer was pressed on Labour’s education reforms rather than the atrocities in Southport
PARLIAMENTLIVE.TV
He said: “Kemi wastes PMQs again. Should have led on Trump and shocking debt figures to challenge Starmer.”
While leader Nigel Farage prodded: “Not a single question on Southport from Kemi Badenoch at PMQs today.
“What is the point of the Tories?”
A friend of Badenoch later told GB News’ Political Editor Christopher Hope that she raised the economy last week and acknowledged the Southport killer at the top of her contribution to PMQs.
Richard Tice warned that Kemi Badenoch had ‘wasted PMQs again’
PA
While another said there was “genuine anger” from Kemi and the wider party at what Labour is “doing to schools”.
“They’ve put some important stuff on safeguarding in the bill, but the bulk of it is reversing schools freedoms – rolling back academies, giving unions more control over who can be a teacher and reducing curriculum choice.”
Another Badenoch ally came to her defence after PMQs – Tory leadership runner-up Robert Jenrick, who said Sir Keir Starmer “had no answer” to the Leader of the Opposition’s questions – “because there are none”.
Politics
Number of Britons who believe migration is too high reaches greatest level on record as Starmer told to ‘get a grip’ on crisis
The amount of Britons who think migration to the UK is too high has reached record levels, a damning new poll has found.
Analysis by pollsters at YouGov has revealed that 71 per cent of Britons now think too many people are arriving in the UK – the highest percentage since its records began in July 2019.
The data also shows that 63 per cent of Labour voters now think immigration is too high – also the largest percentage on record.
And voters for Sir Keir Starmer’s party appear not to be alone. The groups which have voiced fears at record levels include 25-64-year-olds, men, women, Conservative voters, Remain voters, and Britons from every region of the UK except Scotland and the North of England – which still poll at 68 and 69 per cent, respectively.
71 per cent of Britons now believe immigration is too high
YOUGOV
The only group which didn’t show majority support for the view that migration is too high was 18-24-year-olds, at 44 per cent.
The data has sparked calls for Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to act – led by Migration Watch UK chairman Alp Mehmet.
He told GB News: “Public concern about immigration is longstanding, and has now reverted to the levels we saw before the electorate were fooled into believing it was going to be controlled and reduced.
“We warned that was never going to happen with the ridiculously lax immigration system introduced after Brexit.
MORE ON BRITAIN’S MIGRATION CHAOS:
‘Sir Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper would do well to regard this poll as another red flag and get a grip,’ Alp Mehmet warned
PA
“We also warned that failure to control immigration and reduce immigration would further erode trust in politicians and our political system.
“It gives me no satisfaction to say we were right.
“Sir Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper would do well to regard this poll as another red flag and get a grip of both legal and illegal immigration.”
Migration under the former Conservative Government has been the subject of attacks from Starmer himself – he has accused the Tories of running “a one-nation experiment in open borders” and has claimed cutting migration “will only be done with a serious plan”.
Migration under the former Conservative Government has been the subject of attacks from Starmer himself
PA
Setting out his five ‘milestones’ in Labour’s “Plan for Change” at the end of November, Starmer warned: “This happened by design, not accident.
“Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration.
“Brexit was used for that purpose… to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders. Global Britain – remember that slogan… That is what they meant.”
While the Home Office’s line is the same – Seema Malhotra, Minister for Migration and Citizenship, said: “Net migration quadrupled in the past five years and we have been clear that we will get the numbers down and restore order to our broken immigration system as part of our Plan for Change.”
Politics
Labour told to ‘hang their heads in shame’ as Lee Anderson lashes out over Axel Rudakubana ‘cover-up’
Reform UK MP Lee Anderson has accused Labour politicians of orchestrating a “cover-up” over the Southport attack, saying they should “hang their heads in shame”.
Speaking on GB News, Anderson claimed the public had suspected terror links from the start, while politicians at Westminster denied them.
He praised Nigel Farage for demanding immediate answers about the case last summer.
The MP suggested the riots in the North West could have been “nipped in the bud” if authorities had been more forthcoming with information.
Lee Anderson blasted politicians in a furious rant
GB NEWS
“The great British public deserve to know the truth and there has been a cover-up,” Anderson told GB News viewers.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer yesterday admitted he had “withheld” information about Axel Rudakubana’s terrorist links but denied being part of a cover-up.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murdering three young girls in the Southport knife attack in July 2024PASpeaking at an emergency press conference, he acknowledged being “kept up to date with the facts” by police and prosecutors.
The Prime Minister insisted revealing crucial details about the killer’s fascination with terrorism could have prejudiced his trial.
“It was not my personal decision to withhold this information. That is the law of the land and it is in place to protect the integrity of the system,” Starmer said.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper backed this position, saying ministers could not ignore legal advice about contempt of court.
Lee Anderson spoke on GB News
GB NEWS
The Crime Reporters Association (CRA) has complained to the Director of Public Prosecutions about the Crown Prosecution Service attempting to “gag” Merseyside Police.
The CRA said officers were instructed to “stay silent” about the case as riots broke out last summer.
According to the association, the CPS tried to prevent officers from revealing details about Rudakubana’s background, which might have prevented false rumours fuelling unrest.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the failure to be transparent created a vacuum where dangerous misinformation took hold online.
“There could have been more openness and transparency … without prejudicing the trial,” Philp said.
Anderson drew direct comparisons to previous terror incidents, claiming there was a double standard in how information was handled.
“Jo Cox we had that instant and PC Palmer. These were all incidents that were stated as terror-related within 24 hours and it didn’t influence proceedings,” he told GB News.
The Reform UK MP accused Westminster politicians of hypocrisy in their approach to the Southport case.
His comments came as Starmer warned that Britain now faces new threats from “loners and misfits” radicalised by online violence, different from traditional organised terrorist groups.
With Democrats poised to deliver an early immigration victory to President Donald Trump, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus split over how to approach the issue in a closed-door meeting Wednesday morning.
Some discussed using Democrats’ limited political leverage under unified GOP rule: Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) floated conditioning Democratic support for a debt-limit increase on protections for Dreamers — undocumented migrants brought to the U.S. as children.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), meanwhile, debated how to respond to hard-line Republican-led immigration bills — such as the Laken Riley Act, which has attracted Democratic support and is poised to pass Congress Wednesday. Two people familiar with the meeting were granted anonymity to describe the private conversations.
Ocasio-Cortez emphasized the need for her party to develop a winning strategy and better messaging to respond to the Republican bills and prevent swing-district lawmakers from having to break party ranks.
But Sanchez, who leads the caucus’ political arm, said progressive members’ messaging efforts weren’t working and said that Democrats were at risk of losing the larger battle over immigration policy as a result.
It was the latest manifestation of an intense debate that has racked Democrats since the 2024 elections, where many blamed immigration and border issues for swinging the presidential and congressional results to Republicans.
The Laken Riley Act was only the first of numerous tough-on-immigration bills that Republicans are likely to bring to the House floor. Dozens of Democrats have broken ranks so far, much to the dismay of many Hispanic Caucus members who are watching the party move to the center on its issue — including, they fear, its leaders.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stopped by the Hispanic Caucus meeting, the people familiar said.
Coming out of the broader House Democratic Caucus meeting earlier in the morning, Jeffries said Democrats were “unified in the position that we want to secure the border and fix our broken immigration system in a bipartisan and comprehensive manner.”
Hispanic Caucus chair Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) called the meeting an “informative discussion” about members’ positions and said, “we all agree that the situation at the border needs to be stronger but that we also recognize that Dreamers, farmworkers and families must be protected.”
“We are all united on this,” he said, adding that included Jeffries.
Democratic lawmakers have broadly emphasized to leadership in the wake of the election there needs to be a cohesive message from the party on immigration. But the particulars of that has been tricky, with Republicans eager to put them on the spot by holding votes on bills that would, for instance, require the detention of many migrants accused of crimes.
Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) was among those calling for a more forceful response to the GOP legislation.
“I think we need to stand firm, as we’ve done on other causes in the Democratic caucus,” he said. “While we firm up a position on immigration policy in general as we plan forward, it’s important to push back on efforts like this, because if not, then you cede the ground to all kinds of other falsehoods that are to come.”
Some other lawmakers, however, said there had to be some recognition of political reality.
“I think each member has to have a response based on what’s in the best interest of their district,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.). And he took a longer view of their response to Trump: “It’s not a sprint, it’s a two-year marathon.”
2025 is Britain’s last chance to avoid a long-term migration catastrophe of Boris Johnson’s making, a leading think tank has warned.
Back in March 2021, Boris Johnson’s Home Secretary Priti Patel introduced the “New Plan for Immigration” to the Commons.
A few months later, the Office for National Statistics announced that 332,000 non-EU migrants had arrived in Britain between June 2020 and June of that year.
A few years later, 1,034,000 non-EU migrants arrived in Britain over the same June-to-June period. A more than 200 per cent increase.
Damning data shows a sharp spike in non-EU migration immediately after Johnson and Patel’s ‘new plan’
UK GOVERNMENT
Patel had hailed what she called a “significant overhaul of our asylum system”. It was “new, comprehensive, fair, but firm”.
She had promised “new rules to stop unscrupulous people posing as children”, a beefed-up Border Force, and “rapid removals” of “those with no right to be here in the UK”.
With Brexit having been delivered, and EU free movement no longer foisted upon the UK, Westminster could now look further afield. At the time, that was Hong Kong, as dissidents to Xi Jinping’s regime found themselves unexpectedly crushed under China’s boot in the former British dependent territory.
Leaving the EU would let Britain be “immigration liberals”, wrote James Forsythe, future Political Secretary to future Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, with Hongkongers in mind.
He had written that the issue on the minds of many Brexit-backers “was control, not immigration levels, per se”.
READ MORE ON BRITAIN’S MIGRATION CHAOS:
Leaving the EU would let Britain be ‘immigration liberals’, wrote James Forsythe
GETTY/THE TIMES
Then, in May 2022 – and midway through an unprecedented surge in arrivals from outside the EU – the Johnson Government’s interpretation of the Australian ‘points-based system’ was accused of having “significantly weakened control” over Britain’s borders.
Those numbers would keep climbing until 2024, the ONS says, and they’re now expected to drop.
That surge has been branded by some as the “Boriswave” – a term which found its origins on social media, and has since made its way to think tanks and political parties alike. On December 29, Reform UK officially adopted the term in a scathing attack on Johnson’s non-European migration surge.
Proponents of the term will argue Johnson and his Government directly oversaw – and allowed the conditions for – millions of non-EU nationals to come to Britain.
And now, with Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) open to most of those who arrived via the Work or Family visa route after five years, Britain faces a “ticking clock“.
That’s the warning of Sam Bidwell, of the Adam Smith Institute, who calls for an immediate reform of ILR rules to “limit the long-term harms of the so-called ‘Boriswave’”, which will start being handed ILR for life from early 2026.
The surge in non-EU migration has been branded by some as the ‘Boriswave’
PA
That will give the “Boriswave” the right to taxpayer-funded state benefits, the ability to use the NHS free-of-charge, and the chance to bring in family members – a “cascade of dependents”, as Bidwell put it.
Britain’s system “was not designed to cope with long-term settlement at such scale and pace,” he warns.
Even if Labour manages to deliver 1.5 million new homes between now and 2029, the scale of the non-EU migration wave is such that that tally could be wiped out entirely.
If such a large amount of people are, in fact, here to stay, the consequences could be dire.
Bidwell himself butted heads with ex-Spectator editor Fraser Nelson just days ago after the latter penned an article in The Telegraph headlined: “Britain’s integration miracle is a beacon of hope amid instability.”
Nelson had argued that Britishness – part of which the “Boriswave” could soon comprise – is “a set of values that anyone can adopt”.
But under Johnson and Patel’s “new plan”, the UK has imported millions of people who, as Bidwell says, are “less culturally compatible” than the EU migrants who came before.
He points to damning statistics on integration, like how 52 per cent of British Muslims would support making it illegal to depict the Prophet Mohammed, or how Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the UK are less employed and take up more social housing than national averages.
Bidwell also casts off “oft-cited figures about Indian high-earners” as a “misrepresentative statistical fudge” directly due to the “Boriswave”.
Thanks to the recent influx of Indian nationals (240,000 in the last year alone, according to the ONS), the median Indian (aged 22-40) now earns less than the national average.
The difficulty of integration may not be so obvious to “the Westminster bubble”, as Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe pointed out on social media.
For them, “integration means cheap labour and exotic food”, but “out in proper Britain, integration has largely not worked”, he says.
“On such a vast scale, it has been an undeniable failure.”
Bidwell’s ILR plans were written before the reemergence of Britain’s grooming gangs scandal – which has thrust mass migration into the spotlight once again.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick warned that some of those who have migrated to the UK in recent years have “backward, frankly medieval attitudes to women” – adding that “we have to be very careful about who is coming into this country”.
‘Integration has largely not worked… it has been an undeniable failure,’ Rupert Lowe has warned
GETTY
But Jenrick was Rishi Sunak’s Immigration Minister for more than a year – and oversaw part of the “Boriswave”.
The Tory leadership runner-up shifted from campaigning for Remain in 2016 to his new role as a migration hardliner – which one former Minister blamed on his stint in the Home Office.
Before that, “he was seen as sensible, pragmatic and fairly centrist,” a former Minister told the i last summer.
“He was very good as the Communities Secretary, but he seems to have been radicalised by his time in the Home Office,” they added.
That’s the same Home Office which Sam Bidwell has previously accused of falling victim to “performative empathy“.
Jenrick has been vocal on mass immigration post-leadership bid – sparking fury from ex-Johnson adviser Samuel Kasumu, who claimed to the BBC that he could be “the most divisive person in our political history” and “has the potential to incite hatred in ways that I have never seen”.
But he issued a stark warning last November. “Some parts of our country are unrecognisable from 30 years ago,” Jenrick said.
And, of course, there’s the fiscal impact too.
Robert Jenrick was ‘radicalised by his time in the Home Office’, one former Minister told the i
PA
“According to figures produced by the OBR, the average ‘low-wage migrant worker’ will cost the British taxpayer £465,000 by the time they reach 81 years of age,” Bidwell’s policy recommendation warns.
“According to analysis conducted by Karl Williams, from the Centre for Policy Studies, just 5 per cent of all visas in 2022-23 were given to high-skilled migrants who are likely to be net contributors,” he adds.
Pockets of social media aside, Johnson has largely evaded criticism for overseeing the introduction of so many fiscally harmful and culturally “incompatible” migrants to Britain.
Asked why, Bidwell told GB News: “He still carries a lot of capital with a certain sort of Brexit voter… because he was the face of Vote Leave.
“He has managed to escape scrutiny because many of those voters – particularly older voters in that cohort – will see him as the man who got Brexit done.”
Johnson has escaped scrutiny because voters ‘see him as the man who got Brexit done’
PA
The former PM now “enjoys a kind of comfortable martyrdom” despite the “Boriswave” because “one might argue that he was arguing for an anti-immigration cause”, he added.
Integrating the “wave” will be “a lengthy and difficult process”, Bidwell says.
The solution? Triple the ILR threshold to 15 years.
Britain should put safeguards in place to ensure that “high-quality, compatible” migrants from countries such as the US, Australia, and Canada continue coming to Britain.
And if Labour doesn’t have the mettle, a future Government could one day revoke ILR status from existing holders by amending Section 76 of the Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act 2002.
Such a move would doubtless prove unpalatable to the current Government, despite its promises to stem the flow of migration – and even then, only illegal migration.
As Bidwell says, “it seems unlikely” that Labour would do such a thing.
“However”, he adds, “this fact alone does not mean that the British people need to live with the mistakes of the past few years for decades to come”.
Solana price rallies to $272, but what will it take for SOL to hit new highs?
Football gossip: Rashford, Sesko, Garnacho, Adeyemi, Walker, Cunha, Dorgu, Tomori
Xbox beta tests support for massive amounts of external storage
-
Fashion8 years agoThese ’90s fashion trends are making a comeback in 2025
-
Entertainment8 years agoThe Season 9 ‘ Game of Thrones’ is here.
-
Fashion8 years ago9 spring/summer 2025 fashion trends to know for next season
-
Entertainment8 years agoThe old and New Edition cast comes together to perform You’re Not My Kind of Girl.
-
Sports8 years agoEthical Hacker: “I’ll Show You Why Google Has Just Shut Down Their Quantum Chip”
-
Business8 years ago
Uber and Lyft are finally available in all of New York State
-
Entertainment8 years ago
Disney’s live-action Aladdin finally finds its stars
-
Sports8 years ago
Steph Curry finally got the contract he deserves from the Warriors
-
Entertainment8 years ago
Mod turns ‘Counter-Strike’ into a ‘Tekken’ clone with fighting chickens
-
Fashion8 years ago
Your comprehensive guide to this fall’s biggest trends
You must be logged in to post a comment Login