Today the man most associated with a loathing of immigrants will promise to make them next to non-existent.
Nigel Farage will launch the Reform manifesto with a promise to keep only the migrants that are rich and useful, are not in need of asylum, and don't know any students. And, if he's honest, are the least-brown.
In doing so he will be aping what almost every politician across the developed world has done, pinned a country's economic problems on people who look different, eat different, and pray different. And it's had some success: look at Brexit. It's easy to blame 'those guys' rather than homegrown idiots.
There's just one problem with this electoral stroke of genius that has swept people to power in Europe, Australia and America, thanks largely to votes of the grey-haired for whom the word 'racism' is a recent invention. The truth no voter is being told is that our economic problems can be solved in one of just two ways: either MORE immigrants, or FEWER old people.
You can tell she's thinking about it (Getty Images)There were politicians around the world who saw the Covid pandemic as a blame-free way out of this political headache. "Let the bodies pile high!" such a morality vaccum might have said. "Bye bye granny, and take your demographic bulge with you."
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It is the developed world, largely, which ended the Second World War with a baby boom. In 1938 the UK birth rate was about 15 per 1,000 people, and in 1946 when the boys came home it leapt to 21. It dropped as rationing continued into the 1950s, and peaked again in 1964 when the boomers had babies of their own. Industrial decline and birth control combined to cause another slump in the 1970s, and it bumped and slid downwards as women got careers and couples prioritised housing and holidays before starting a family.
Today the birth rate is about 10 per 1,000 people, and 30% of those babies are born to women who weren't born in the UK. Cue the Great Replacement Theory, cue its-not-racism-it's-just-not-how-it-used-to-be, and fears that immigrants will somehow alter what it is to be British, coming over here with all their babies and their melanin.
Those born in the post-war boom are now 76. Enoch Powell made his 'Rivers of Blood' speech when they were 22, and having their own babies, in their own homes. There are about 5.8million of them still around, and they've a good chance of being here for another Parliament. By comparison there are just 807,000 22-year-olds, they won't have a child for another decade, and won't buy a house until they're 34.
"We're f***ed, aren't we?" (Getty Images/iStockphoto)It is the younger people paying for the older ones. They have plenty going for them: they probably just left university, they have a £1,000 computer in their pockets with access to the entirety of human knowledge, and they aren't hungry. But they're on poverty wages, forced into unpaid internships, or living with parents. Their grandparents, meanwhile, are kicking back on the proceeds of several property booms, workers' rights, and the NHS which is keeping them ticking over long past what was once expected to be their use-by date.
Who's got the education, and who has the wealth, has inverted, and everyone between the ages of 76 and 22 expects that they'll live longer, and their pensions will rise to cover prices. The fact that this is unsustainably expensive is why the pension age is rising, along with the tax burden, and also why politicians won't talk about it: would YOU want to blame your boss for the thing that is fatally undermining the entire enterprise?
There are not enough younger people to fund the lifestyles of the older; and when the young people get old, they'll expect the same lifestyle, but can afford to have even fewer of their own children to fund it. The declining birth rate is an economic atom bomb, with multiple untold consequences - at a certain point, the decline is not repairable and civilisation collapses. And at a certain point, any growth would become unsustainable. The happy medium, if there is one, has yet to manifest.
We all expect better health, more longevity, more wealth, improved tech, a home and family of our own, yet we cannot have what we are greedy for without a working population big enough to fund the non-working parts. And that means either we cull the old, or let in - gasp - young men of fighting age and let them assimilate to full citizenship, and full taxability, ASAP.
"NO NO NO NO oh my poor head" (AFP via Getty Images)People in their 20s have decades of economic productivity ahead of them. They have physical strength, and a drive to earn, learn, and move where the work is. The middle-aged have settled, the elders have a lifestyle built around state benefits, and every study shows that migrants take less from the state than they put in.
The problem is that we don't treat migrants as we should. Not only do we allow Nigel to be flat-out rude to them - even to their sons if they grow up to be Prime Minister and he doesn't deem them culturally-aware - but we don't encourage them to settle, to gain citizenship, or to be as fully and thoroughly taxed as those already resident.
We need to be more welcoming, because if we don't they will go and produce economic benefits, and future taxpayers, somewhere else. And granny will be dependent upon Gen Zedders who want to make a meaningful social contribution via YouTube.
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It is ironic that the people least inclined to want more immigration - the over-75s - have the greatest need of them. To not only fund their pensions, but to mow their lawns, empty their bins, and provide domiciliary care. Younger people are less likely to have a problem with immigration, but those who do are more likely to come from areas of high unemployment, and to believe it's the migrants taking all the jobs rather than, for example, the fact that Merthyr Tydfil had its hope hollowed out 40 years ago and no bugger has bothered to replace it.
But it is the grey vote which matters most at the ballot box, and it is they who are most likely make everyone worse off in the belief the only impact they'll feel is a whiter Britain. They associate the prosperity of their youth with the fact almost everyone they knew was young, and white. They have forgotten that their granny died at 60, not 80, there was no NHS, the state pension was a few breadcrumbs, and home ownership was something that only applied to dukes.
Our lifestyles, and future, all depend on a large influx of immigrants. If we don't get them soon, every luxury we consider a necessity will disappear. We could all pop out four babies tomorrow, and it would take decades for them to fund today's older generation. As the birth rate resets to something a little more sustainable, our politicians need to admit what they have so long avoided saying: that voters need to accept either more migrants, or significantly less of everything else.
No-one will, for at least the next Parliament. And Nigel certainly won't, even though he's got the oldest and most racist voters of them all - the truth would make him implode. If you really love Britain, and want to see it thrive, then the only way is mass immigration.
But they didn't put that on the bus, did they?
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