When I came to Britain in the mid-1990s, the public were entirely unconcerned about immigration, with just 3 per cent describing it as a major issue. Back in the early 1990s, net migration was running at about 54,000 people.
This was followed almost immediately by the hugely popular election of Tony Blair, who abandoned all caution with Britain welcoming more people during his premiership than had come between the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and 1950. Cameron, his Conservative successor, and his innumerable replacements, failed to stem the tide. Despite the popular uprising that we call Brexit, the latest net migration figures up to June 2023 were 672,000.
The result? Sectarian clashes in major British cities, parliament abandoning its own rules to appease Islamists and rising ethnic tensions. Concerns about “social cohesion” so widely shared by police chiefs and politicians across the Western world have actually contributed to its decline.
It seems to me that Australia is in danger of making many of the same mistakes. Getting ordinary Australians to recognise the threat before the dangerous threshold is reached is the big challenge for the country’s sensible elite. Whether they can succeed remains to be seen.
