It’s a matter of common knowledge that the Daily Express has long since scraped right through the bottom of the barrel and is now busily digging its way to Australia.

Nevertheless, the latest entry in it ongoing ‘thieving foreigners’ series really takes the biscuit:

NOW POLES GET FREE ABORTIONS ON NHS

POSTERS advising Polish women to fly to Britain for free abortions on the NHS sparked outrage ­yesterday.

They urge women to take advantage of EU rules allowing Poles free medical care in the UK.

And it tells them it is cheaper to fly to the UK to end an unwanted pregnancy than to pay for an illegal ­backstreet ­termination in Poland.

The advert – which borrows tastelessly from a famous “Priceless” credit card campaign – is promoted by a Polish feminist group. It was condemned last night for encouraging “abortion tourism”, and piling pressure on the hard-pressed NHS.

Poland has the fourth, or maybe fifth, most restrictive abortion laws in Europe behind the Vatican City, Malta, Andorra, the Irish Republic and, sad to say, Northern Ireland, and that makes thing kind of thing both inevitable and the clearest possible demonstration of the utter futility of  placing draconian restrictions on access to abortion services. continue reading… »

Guest post by Jennifer O’Mahony

On March 1st in France, immigrants were encouraged to stay at home, protest, and spend nothing as a nationwide protest against the country’s latent problems with immigration and national identity.

Peggy Derder, Nadir Dendoune and Nadia Lamarkbi, three French professionals in their thirties, hit upon the idea of la journée sans immigrés, or the day without immigrants, after years of endless police checks and discrimination. The trio were encouraging anyone who is an immigrant, of immigrant origin, or who feels solidarity with immigrants and wanted to contest their treatment to take these three simple measures for just one day. In a political system where there are no black or Arab representatives, despite the fact that these minorities make up 10% of the population, people of immigrant origin wanted to make their invisibility and silence symbolically evident in workplaces around France.

Their aim was to make their compatriots see how different their country would look and sound if France’s minorities did not exist. The demonstration also sought to highlight the economic contribution that minorities make, and the range of industries they operate within France. Demonstrators were hoping to empty offices, stop public transport and close stores. The idea quickly spread and similar demonstrations were seen in Spain, Italy, and Greece. continue reading… »

The editor of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, is, I understand from the Financial Times, a “committed Christian”.

He is presumably familiar with the way in which the parable of the Good Samaritan warns us away from racist stereotyping, and perhaps also of the anti-racist message in the episode of the moneychangers in the temple.

He is also, according to the FT, a key influence on the thinking of the Conservative party hierarchy, his blog supposedly reflective of Conservative grassroots opinion.

In this guise, Montgomerie is now proposing that each Tory leaflet before the election should strip the content down to three key messages. Here they are:

(1) something on the economy, emphasising how Brown has failed on controlling debt, cutting waste and regulating the banks;

(2) something on crime and immigration; and

(3) something on protecting the NHS and the most vulnerable.

(My emphasis)

So Montgomerie is suggesting that around a third of the Tories’ overall ‘message-time’ should be spent conflating the issues of crime and immigration.

For him, and presumably for his readership, it is perfectly reasonable to insinuate/imply/spell out that crime is a problem because there are immigrants, and immigrants are a problem because there is crime.

In its way, this is actually much more shocking than Rod Liddle’s outrageous claims, because however revolting they are there is always the sense that it’s the desire to outrage that drives the racist message, rather than the other way round.

But Mongomerie’s casual, perhaps even unthinking racism, with its apparent willingness to victimise a whole section of an already victimised population (let’s not get into who’s an immigrant) is simply disgusting.

And this man calls himself a Christian.

Because I possess a lousy news antennae, my choice for top story isn’t the tightening in the opinion polls or David Cameron’s promise to ‘double up on change’.

Instead, I was startled by yet more troubling allegations about the conditions at Yarl’s Wood. To add to the reported mistreatment of children and the four week hunger strike, the Observer has now obtained testimonies from people inside the facility that guards have been beating women:

Jacqui McKenzie of Birnberg Peirce said: “I have spoken to a client of mine in Yarl’s Wood and she has seen the bruising herself from the incident on 8 February. There is an atmosphere of real tension there.”

The images of the bruising show the injuries allegedly sustained during the incident by Denise McNeil, a 35-year-old Jamaican, who claims she was hit by staff and, since the disturbance, has been moved to London’s Holloway prison.
…
Meme Jallow, 26, from Gambia, who has been inside Yarl’s Wood for seven months, said: “A girl called Denise was by the windows. One officer took her and hit her by the face.”

Another hunger striker, a 37-year-old from Nigeria who asked to remain anonymous for fear of her asylum case being unfairly reviewed, said: “The security went outside and used shields like they do when there is a war. That is what they used to smash one of the women who was outside.”

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contribution by 5 Chinese Crackers

On the back of my article last week, I started looking for the evidence behind the idea that the government was involved in a dastardly sercet plot to increase immigration ‘for social reasons’.

That is of course code for ‘increasing multiculturalism’ or worse still ‘importing people who will vote Labour’.

The first set of reports in the press were apparently based on an early draft of the Executive Summary of a document produced by Civil Servants from the Home Office and Cabinet Office.  We were treated to nice little snippets in the Mail showing us exactly what had been removed. 

Imagine the dishonesty of taking things out of a document.   There’s definitely a secret plot if someone does that.
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Health Tourists are the latest group to come under fire in the shooting gallery that is winning the public’s hearts before the General Election. Labour have here taken a problem (foreigners coming to the UK and stealing our j…healthcare) and turned it in to a somewhat solid policy idea.

Of course solid doesn’t mean good, and I need to make sure it’s clear no-one thinks I’m even slightly in favour of these sort of right-wing populist policies rather than allowing those desperate enough to get good healthcare using our country’s system.

As with all immigration policy it is hamstrung (thankfully) by the lack of ability to wage it against the European Economic Area (EEA).

But for the purpose of the next minute or so of your attention I am not really going to argue about immigration…this is about elections, and more specifically why this story is another example of why the Tories lead is likely to be slipping.
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contribution by 5 Chinese Crackers

A few months ago, Andrew Neather wrote a pro-immigration column in the Standard saying that although immigration was a good thing and there were sound economic resons behind allowing it to increase, there was also an undercurrent in early 2000s Labour thinking that reasoned that immigration would also increase multiculturalism, which was a good thing.  That made him uncomfortable.

The tabs seized on this and turned the main reason for Labour’s immigration policy into a dastardly master plan to change the face of Britain on purpose, just to hack off Conservatives.  Mwuh-huh-huh-huh-haaah!

Neather reacted to this by writing a rebuttal, ‘How I became the story and why the Right is wrong’ in which he said:

Somehow this has become distorted by excitable Right-wing newspaper columnists into being a “plot” to make Britain multicultural.

There was no plot.

But this idea of a secret plot has resurfaced, because MigrationWatch sent out an FoI request and now they’ve got the smoking gun that proves Labour did deliberately increase immigration on purpose as a secret scheme to encourage multiculturalism! 
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Melanie Phillips has been foaming at the mouth again over ‘Neathergate’:

A covert policy to subvert the makeup of the country and change its national identity, an abuse of democracy, a stupendous swindle of the British people — more, an act of collective treachery to the nation: an enormous story, you might think? You would be wrong. Other than in the Daily Mail, I cannot find any reference to this anywhere else.

Tabloid Watch has done already done a good job debunking the assertion that Migration Watch’s latest ’revelations’ are only being covered in the Daily Mail, by pointing out that they’ve been covered in The Sun, The Express and the Telegraph.

A bit of background. Andrew Neather was previously a government advisor who last year wrote a comment piece claiming New Labour’s immigration policy was: “intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”. He later clarified his point, but it was too late – by that time the right had assumed a huge conspiracy.
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Here’s one of those especially crass Sun articles written with the type of feigned ignorance so prevalent in the tabloids:

ILLEGAL immigrants are getting the VIP treatment when booted out of Britain – with personal security escorts costing almost £500 each.

Yes, you read that right – the VIP treatment. I don’t know what VIP means to you, but I somehow doubt that those who considered themselves such would put up for long with what the average failed asylum seeker or illegal immigrant faces prior to their deportation, often provided by the same private security firms.

The last report into Colnbrook (PDF) immigration removal centre, ran by Serco (glossy corporate, touchy-feely everything is wonderful page), where many are held prior to their deportation due to its location near to Heathrow, found that it was struggling to cope and that safety was a significant concern.

The reason why “personal security escorts” are used is twofold – firstly because there are few officials and staff within the UK Border Agency who are authorised to use force and as result many first attempts to deport individuals are abandoned because those whose time has come dare to resist – and secondly as many within the UKBA are not prepared to actually see the policies which they implement put into effect.
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George Carey, Archbisop of Canterbury until 2002, has written in today’s Times< , in which he just stops short of calling for Christians to be given priority in a migration point system.

The article echoes what he already said yesterday on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The former Archbishop and current member of the Balanced Migration Group followed a template that we’ve recently seen far too often from the usual suspects: a) if you talk about immigration you are branded a racist b) if you want to stop the BNP from growing you need to “seriously address the concerns” c) Britain is a Christian country.

To which the answers are:
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contribution by Left Outside

Up until the 19th century we were not a particularly piscivorious nation.

In the United Kingdom, fish and chips became a cheap food popular among the working classes with the rapid development of trawl fishing in the North Sea in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1860 The first fish and chip shop was opened in London by Jewish proprietor Joseph Malin who married together “fish fried in the Jewish fashion” with chips.

Consisting on a diet of mostly meat and one veg – two if you were lucky – the idea that a national dish – the national dish – would be fried fish and fried potatoes would be confusing to our 19th century forebears.

But then some Jews came along from Eastern Europe, fleeing terror or just seeking a better life. With their funny ways, keeping mostly to themselves, making cabinets and clothes and eating odd un-British things like fish, they didn’t do much harm.

This fish eating slowly dispersed throughout the nation and became more and more popular via market stalls and street hawkers until ventures like our Mr Malin’s became profitable.

It is no exaggeration to say that the marvellously, almost quintessentially, English dish fish and chips is an immigrant dish. With the disdain modern migrants are held in its a little hard to believe, but we owe a lot of what Gordon Brown calls “Britishness” to immigrants.

Funny old world, eh?

When Labour’s best political boast is now more or less that they won’t be as brutal as the Conservatives will, it’s well worth remembering how the government treats some of the most vulnerable in society.

Not content with having expanded the prison population to such an extent that as soon as a new wing or establishment is built it is almost immediately filled, it also seems hell-bent on continuing with the detention of those whose only crime is to be the children of asylum seekers who have had their application for refugee status rejected.

Not that the government itself has the guts to be personally responsible for their detention. Probably the most notorious detention centre in the country, Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire, is run by SERCO.

In the last report on Yarl’s Wood, the chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers noted (PDF) while Yarl’s Wood should seek to improve the “plight of children” who were being held in the centre, they were “ultimately issues” for the UK Border Agency.
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This is a guest post by James Radcliffe of Shelter Cymru in response to the current immigration series. It takes a view of some of the consequences of legislation passed to restrict migrant worker’s access to benefits and explodes the myth immigrants are getting free houses, free cars and massive benefits.

When the A8 countries joined the EU in 2004, the UK government was faced with the usual scare stories in tabloid newspapers about Britain being over-run by hoards of migrants who would both steal our jobs and lazily claim benefits.

Faced with these concerns the UK government introduced additional restrictions on people from the new members of the EU. They introduced the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) in order to initially monitor and restrict access to benefits.

For those of you still unconvinced of the power of the media, it is worth taking a look at the leaked paper from the ministerial working group on immigration that considered whether to extend the WRS beyond the initial transition period. Note the following paragraphs:

“The change in policy is likely to be perceived domestically as a loosening of the governments grip on migration and benefit shopping. This would contrast unhelpfully with other government policy to tighten management of the migration system (as set out in the five year strategy for immigration and asylum). Public and media opinion remains largely resistant to rational arguments for migration, and the media climate is more hostile to migration now than in early 2004………..by closing the WRS, the UK would be going out on a limb re-igniting the media debate to no obvious (domestic public) advantage”

This has a consequence. In order to be eligible for public funds*, an A8 national has to been registered on the WRS and working in the UK for 12 months continually (they are allowed up to 30 days break). If they do not meet these criteria then they cannot access housing services, and many welfare benefits.

In the jargon they have No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). A8 nationals in the UK with this condition do not have a welfare state to provide a safety net for them should they lose their job or get evicted from their home, etc.

As a result, anecdotal evidence of destitution amongst A8 nationals began to emerge from a variety of sources. I’m highlighting a couple of case studies that we uncovered in the course of our research to illustrate the human side of NRPF.
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Note: Having split the asylum article in two, this is longest single article in the series and pretty data heavy to boot. Its also not one that can be easily split without compromising the argument, so for ease of reading and comfort I’ve provided a full PDF version for download – Economic Migration.pdf -it probably has loads of typos.

Other than asylum, the most contentious issue within the entire immigration debate over the last 10-12 years has been that of economic migration.

With the annual number of asylum applications received by the UK having fallen dramatically, from a peak of 84,000 in 2002 to less than 24,000 in 2006 and 2007, the lowest such figure since 1993, the tabloids have needed a new source for their favourite ‘swamped by foreigners’ stories and since the expansion of the EU into Eastern Europe, that source has been provided by migrant workers.

As ever, the truth is much more complicated than the tabloids would have us believe and contains some fairly stark lessons about the true state of the British economy, lessons that politicians on all sides of the House of Commons seem unwilling to acknowledge openly.

In July, this year, the Daily Mail ran what is, for both the tabloids and mid-market newspaper titles, a fairly typical story about economic migration:

British jobs for foreign workers: Experts reveal 70% of new jobs taken by migrants

More than seven out of ten jobs created under the Labour Government have been taken by foreign-born workers, experts revealed last night.

The percentage of new jobs taken by those born overseas is the highest of any of the major economies analysed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The article carries on to make the specific claim that an OECD analysis of British labour market trends since 1997 had shown that of an increase of ‘around 2 million’ jobs since 1997, ‘almost 1.5 million of this was accounted for by persons born abroad’ before adding that this amounted to ‘71% of the total’. This is a classic example of the press altering reality to fit a pre-packaged agenda. The report, itself, was published on the day after the OECD released its 2009 ‘International Migration Outlook’ report with this press release:

Keep doors open to migrant workers to meet long-term labour needs, says OECD

30/06/2009 – The economic crisis is likely to cause the first major fall in the number of migrants coming to work in OECD countries since the 1980s, according to a new OECD report. This is already happening, for example, in Ireland, Spain and the UK, which were among the countries first hit by the downturn…

In the United Kingdom and Ireland migration from the new EU member countries has declined by more than half.

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Between 1991 and 2007, citizens of 41 different countries and areas (i.e. EU Accession States/ Former USSR) have generated enough asylum applications to be listed in official statistics in their own right. These countries/areas account for 682,000 of the 739,000 asylum applications made during that period, the remainder being recorded as ‘other’ and broken down only by region. Top of that list, in terms of the numbers seeking asylum, is Somalia; at the bottom is the African state of Togo with 780 applications.

Of those 739,000 applicants, slightly fewer than 10% (73,750) were granted asylum on a permanent basis on the strength of their initial application with a further 17% (124,720) granted either exceptional of discretionary leave to remain. 529,000 applications were turned down at the first time of asking.
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This is part one of a two-part article on asylum, which I’ve had to split to keep to a manageable length.

No single issue has done more to poison the immigration well in recent years than that of asylum seekers, or ‘bogus asylum seekers’ as the Daily Mail and the rest of the gutter press would have everyone believe. It is, I think, well known that the Daily Mail wishes fervently that it lived in a fantasy world of easy certainties (the 1950’s) and nowhere does this seem more evident than its coverage of asylum seekers, the vast majority of whom are labelled ‘bogus’ on the strength of nothing more than a bunch of lazy ethnic stereotypes that belong firmly in the 1950’s and, quite frankly, should have been left where they were.

Beyond the headlines there is, however, a much more complicated story to be told.

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Fact: The population of the UK rose by 3.737 million people between 1990 and 2007.

Fact: Total net migration to the UK between 1990 and 2007 was 2.097 million, 56% of the total increase in population. Of that figure, 1.859 million stems from the period from 1997-2007.

Fact: Between 1997 and 2007, 1.292 million people were granted the right to settle in the UK.

Fact: Between 1997 and 2007, 1.646 million former migrants became British Citizens.

Fact: Net immigration rose significantly under New Labour. There is no denying that fact.

For some people those figures, alone, are sufficient reason to put up the shutters and declare that Britain is full, even if they barely scratch the surface when it comes to telling the real story of immigration over the last 12-18 years.

For example, although total net migration amounts to 1.859 million between 1997 and 2007, the number of people currently living in the UK with full settlement rights has risen by only 480,000. Britain is a net exporter of its own citizens, 811,000 in the period from 1997-2007 on top of the 297,000 (net) who left the UK between 1991 and 1996. So somewhere in the world right now, possibly Spain, someone is sitting down to read today’s copy of the Daily-o Mail-o and complaining bitterly to themselves about all the bloody Brits who’ve been going over there to take their jobs.

Migration is not a zero sum game. The net increase in Britain’s migrant population stems from population movements involving 12.454 million people between 1991 and 2007 (9.076 million since 1997) into and out of the UK. Of the 4.586 million foreign nationals who entered the UK between 1997 and 2007, 1.838 million had moved on by the end of 2007 and a further 1.51 million were still here only on a temporary basis, including 454,000 whose immigration status remains uncertain as they await a ruling on an asylum application. Of those pending applications, the data suggests that. A quarter, may be granted the right to settle or extended leave to remain in the UK, although it may be less than that as the UK tightens its approach to dealing to asylum seekers and most may eventually have to leave.

Once you drill down into the data, past the few scraps of information that make the tabloid headlines, the picture becomes ever more complex. It’s that picture we are endeavouring to present.

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This is the first of seven (yes, seven!) planned articles looking at the evidence base that lies behind perhaps the most poisonous political issue of the last forty years – immigration.

What I’m going to attempt here is a fairly detailed exploration of the facts of immigration and what the statistical evidence that is available can tell us about its impact on Britain over the last twelve years in particular, although some of the trend data extends back to as early as 1991, providing scope for looking at how a range of different factors over that period of time have impacted on patterns of migration to, from and within the UK.

For reasons of space, if nothing else, these articles are limited in scope. The purpose here is to inform the wider debate and provide a set of platforms and frameworks for ongoing discussion rather than attempt to encompass the totality of the public discourse on immigration. As such, important topics such as crime, social cohesion, multiculturalism and the tensions that exist at the intersection of different cultures brought into close proximity by immigration are likely to arise only tangentially. The aim is here is not to try and sway your opinions towards a specific view of the costs and benefits of immigration but to provide honest, unbiased, information of a kind that should, hopefully, help to arrive at your own, properly informed, position on this issue and the many other complex issue that spin off from it.

As such, comments of the ‘why haven’t you covered…’ variety are likely to get one of two answers, either ‘it’s in one of the upcoming articles’ or ‘that’s an interesting point – why don’t you go and write something about it yourself and link back to here?’. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover so I really don’t have the time to go off on tangents or riff on issues that are outside the main scope of this series.

Key Concepts

Before we start on the meat, we need to bottom out a few important concepts that will run through this series and how these differentiate what I’m attempting here from the kind of coverage you’ll often see in the mainstream press, especially the tabloids and mid-market titles, i.e. the Daily Mail and Daily Express.

First, much of the data we’ll be working with relates to net migration, which takes into account the fact that migration is a two-way street. People come, people go and it’s the difference between the numbers going in each direction that matters not just the numbers coming into the UK.

Second, it needs to be understood, when looking at population demographics, that migration is not the same as settlement. Many migrants stay in the UK for only a limited amount of time before returning to country of origin or moving on another country. Even when talking about net migration and population growth it has to be remembered that a sizeable proportion of migrants currently domiciled in the UK will eventually move on elsewhere, taking their families with them.

Third, we’ll be dealing with trends and time-series data not annual figures, unless they can be shown to be linked to specific alteration in immigration policy/practice. The out-of-context use of annual figures and relative statistics is a common feature of coverage that intends to provoke fear and anxiety [to sell newspapers]. Readers are fed a ‘shock’ headline which tell them that something ‘bad’ has gone up this year by a certain (high) percentage without any reference whatsoever the prevailing trend. You’ll most often see this trick pulled by the press when reporting crime statistics, where you’ll be told that; for example, murders have gone up by 10% this year without any reference to the fact this follows a fall of a similar amount the previous year, so the 10% increase only takes you back to where you were two years ago.

Sadly this is a ubiquitous feature of almost all reporting of issues in which statistical evidence is a significant feature, across a broad range of public policy issues.

Reliance on the lump of labour fallacy to paint a negative picture of the impact of, in particular, economic migration is an all too common feature of media coverage of immigration issues and of contemporary political rhetoric of course. The BNP’s hard-line protectionist position on economic migration is predicated entirely on this fallacy as is the ‘British jobs for British people’ line for which Gordon Brown was rightly pilloried. We’ll pick this up fully when we get on to the subject economic migration but there is a need to mindful of the fact that examples of this particular fallacy at work can be readily found across the broad spectrum of issues that make up the wider immigration debate.

In evaluating the impact of immigration on local or regional economies, rather than on the UK as a whole, it has to be remembered that internal migration will also be a significant factor in terms of its impact on demographic changes to local communities and the extent to which this has a knock-on effect on everything from employment to local economies to the provision of local public services. A clear picture of the impact of immigration must necessarily take account of internal population movements where this is relevant to a particular set of local conditions and/or issues.

Finally, one needs to be cautious in drawing inferences about the ethnic origins of migrants from immigration data, which is recorded in terms of nationality and citizenship. South Africa is, for example, one of the main sources of inward migration to the UK from the ‘Old Commonwealth’ of countries granted de facto independence by the 1931 Statute of Westminster, yet one would be unwise to make assumptions about the ethnic origins of migrants from that country on nationality alone as one would when dealing with the inward and outward migration of British citizens.

Where next?

That’s the preamble over and done with.

In article two of the series, which should go out alongside this one, we’ll be looking at the core demographic evidence before moving on to examine the single biggest source of net migration to the UK since 1991 – students.

In article three we’ll be tackling the thorny subject of asylum and placing it in its proper international context before moving swiftly on to cover economic migration in article four.

As a follow-up to article four we’ll then move on, in article five. to look at patterns of internal migration and its relationship to patterns of international migration into the UK’s regions.

Article six will deal with patterns of settlement and citizenship, after which we’ll wrap up the series in article seven by looking at how immigration issues are presented in the press and how this affects public perceptions of migrants and the wider immigration debate. For any BNP supporting trolls looking in, this will be the one with the Daily Mail-bashing in it, so you can feel free to skip the rest as I know that statistics really isn’t your strong suit.

That’s the battle plan for this series; now let’s get on with the show…

When New Labour’s election strategists sat down to look over the results of the 2005 general election, in which the party lost more seats than they expected, they quickly came to two very clear conclusions.

One was that middle-class opposition to the war in Iraq had spawned a protest vote from which the Liberal Democrats had been the main beneficiaries and had cost them a number of marginal seat. The other was that working class antipathy towards immigration was costing the party votes in its traditional heartlands.

Six weeks later, the government joined the race to the bottom on immigration in earnest with the publication of a new Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, which become law in 2006, restricting the right of appeal against refusal of entry that had previously been afforded to students, dependants and visitors to only human rights and discrimination grounds and imposing fines on employers who employ migrant workers who lack the necessary paperwork, i.e. entry clearance, leave to remain and/or a work permit.

The Conservatives may have spawned the mantra that ‘it’s not racist to talk about immigration’ but it was New Labour who gave it legitimacy.
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David Blackburn writes for the Spectator’s CoffeeHouse blog that the BNP is, No longer a racist party, but a party of racists, in response to the news that BNP membership looks to vote overwhelmingly in favour of allowing non-whites to join the party.
David is highly confused. This is because he says:

The Spectator has maintained that the party’s domestic policies are inspired by racial supremacist ideology and that its economic policies are like Dagenham – that is, three stops beyond Barking.

Yes, I’ll agree with that. The party’s domestic policies are indeed inspired by a racial supremacist ideology. Which is why people should avoid following those policies right? Except, he does on to say centrist parties “must engage with (and I mean engage with, not shout down)” BNP policies. What a muddle. ‘Engage’ is a mealy-mouthed word that usually means ‘follow’.

Earlier this year Tim Montgomerie at ConHome said:

but I do think part of any anti-BNP strategy means addressing popular concerns about immigration, access to housing and championing people’s patriotic instincts… while ALWAYS attacking their racism.

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