Few of us who saw it will everforget Gordon Brown’s horror when he was caught out, live on air, describing alady who had told him of her concerns about immigration, as a ‘bigot’.
To Labour ministers, voicing any uneaseabout Britains’s open door policy was unthinkable, tantamount to racism.
Yet, below the surface, there wasserious disquiet. Certainly, my experience during the election campaign taughtme that one of the subjects guaranteed to come up on the doorstep was Britain’swide open borders.
People were concerned – about thesqueeze on jobs, schools and welfare. Even if the Government was in denial, thevoters weren’t.
Labour insisted that high levels ofimmigration would make us all more prosperous.
Even if that were true – and it isdebatable – there have been significant social effects.
A new report from Migration Watchcalculates that over the next decade, a million additional school places willbe needed for the children of immigrants and the cost of providing them will be£100 billion.
These astonishing figures wereprovided by the Office of National Statistics and the Department of Education.They are based upon a total rise in the birth rate in Britain of 11.1%, eventhough births to women born in the UK have fallen by 3.2%.
To put things into perspective,£100 billion is more than twice the school’s budget, half the total fiscaldeficit and dwarfs the £5 billion promised by the Coalition for the early years‘pupil premium’.
What matters here is that, wherevertheir parents come from, these new babies should grow up as Britons.
Integration is the only way tosucceed. Germany’s attempts to build a multicultural society have ‘utterlyfailed’, according to President Angela Merkel this week. Neighbouring Hollandis in uproar, after years of extreme tolerance.
Trevor Phillips, head of the Equality and Human RightsCommission, claims that multiculturalism is out of date and legitimisesseparateness.
We should ‘assert a core ofBritishness’, he says. I agree.
To me, this means that thoseentering the country – and their children born here - should learn English andadapt top British culture.
We need to focus on what we share,not what divides us. Only then will we truly be members of the same society.