THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: We are clamping down on immigration now, but the gates have been wide open since 1997, writes Charles Moore.EXTRACT: …Most of us do not want immigration on this scale. That is shown by every poll. But, in another sense, most of us do. You and I want someone to serve us in a bar and clean the hospitals and make cheap clothes. I want someone to drive me across town so that I can make my Colonel Blimp remarks to a friendly audience. Above all, we show, in our obsession with birth control, that we do not want to provide a big enough next generation of people like ourselves. Demographic projections now show Britain overtaking Germany as the largest EU country in 30 years or so. None of that growth will come from the indigenous white population.
All this need not be a total disaster. It is possible, though hard, to forge a United Kingdom made up of many ethnicities. Leaders like Mr Cameron are right to try to insist on common standards and better rules, rather than to despair. But whatever it is, and however well it turns out, it cannot be England. Perhaps when I am very old, my grandchildren will ask me what England was. It will be a hard question to answer, but I think I shall tell them that it seemed like a good idea while it lasted, and that it lasted for about 1,000 years. Read it all and comment » | Charles Moore | Friday, April 15, 2011
