Of course immigration fell after the Brexit vote – hate crime has increased dramatically!
Victim of hate crime: The late Jo Cox MP [Image: PA].
Yes, the Office for National Statistics is reporting that immigration has fallen by 23,000, while emigration has risen by 26,000, meaning net migration has fallen below 300,000 (to 273,000) for the first time in more than four years.
But this is no reason for Theresa May to feel relief.
It is a reflection of a 41 per cent rise in hate crime in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum, in which the UK voted to leave the European Union by a tiny majority.
Data from 31 police forces showed that 1,546 racially or religiously aggravated offences were recorded in the two weeks up to and including the day of the referendum in June last year.
But in the fortnight immediately after the poll, the number climbed by almost half to 2,241.
Racist incidents included assaults, arson attacks and dog excrement being thrown at doors or shoved through letter boxes.
That is why foreign nationals are leaving the United Kingdom. The referendum result and its aftermath have allowed this country’s racists to come out of the closet, and encouraged them to attack their fellow human beings for no better reason than their country of origin.
Is Nigel Farage proud of this? He probably is.
What about Boris Johnson or Michael Gove? Theresa May? How about David Cameron, who only called the referendum because he wanted to prevent Eurosceptic Conservative MPs from causing a split in the party?
Perhaps they don’t care – after all, rich Tories aren’t being targeted, and Johnny Foreigner was only invited in to provide cheap labour.
Isn’t that right, Tories?
Perhaps all these politicians should remember that one of their own class was murdered in a race-related hate crime.
Jo Cox was killed by Thomas Mair, a right-wing white supremacist who targeted her for murder because she campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union.
Only yesterday, in Prime Minister’s Questions, MPs on both sides of the House of Commons cheered plans to mark the first anniversary of the MP’s death with a series of street parties around the country – the Great Get Together – designed to bring communities together.
It would be hypocritical for them to applaud a drop in net migration fuelled by the same hate that ended Mrs Cox’s life.
The fact that violence is the real reason net migration has fallen means this is not a success for the United Kingdom and Theresa May.
As a nation, we should be ashamed.
Net migration to Britain fell by 49,000 to 273,000 in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, partly fuelled by 12,000 more Poles and other eastern Europeans leaving the UK, according to official figures.
The fall in annual net immigration … will come as a relief to Theresa May, who has recently renewed her target to get it below 100,000.
A key component in the unexpected fall was an estimated 41,000 drop in the number of international students coming to study in Britain, to 134,000, the lowest level since 2002.
Source: Net migration to UK falls by 49,000 after Brexit vote | UK news | The Guardian
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Well summed up Mike. Very depressing though.
What is a a “hate crime”? For example, you may have been verbally abused by someone in the street because you’re disabled or someone thought you were gay. Is this likely to be due to Brexit, or more likely in the case of the disabled 6 years of Camrons anti disabled mantra of “for hardworking people”, The rise is more than likely due to people complaining of hate crime over trivialities than previously, and the definition of such act’s being registered as such, after all there is no criminal action related to such an event, so maybe the police cut down their case loads by defining other behaviours as hate crime?
Be serious, please.
This may be true, I’m not entirely convinced but another statistic today is that the number of people applying for right to remain etc who are originally from EU countries and have been here for more than 5 years ( the qualifying time I think) has shot up. I’m guessing they’re scared they may be expelled despite assurances the government are to negotiate reciprocal agreements re UK citizens in Europe.
The immigration figures appear to be a bit of a sham given this data release this morning:-
825000 National Insurance Numbers issued to Foreign nationals in 2016
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload…ember-2016.pdf
The question should really be of why all of these racists, xenophobes and others felt the need to express themselves in this way and why they feel this way. The referendum did not make them this way so, what did? This is the question that, time and again, goes unasked and therefore unanswered. I have said, for many years, that Britain is a racist institution and get poo-poo’d for it. Ask black people, here, what their life is like and if you get an honest answer, you will be surprised by what you hear. Most of us just put up with it, because we have had to live with it for our whole lives. Political correctness, in my opinion, is, at least in part, to blame, for it stifles debate, silences people who may have, regardless of what we might think, legitimate concerns and cons the rest of us into thinking that everything in the garden is rosy; well it isn’t and for any black person who was born here, nothing changed after the vote; people are as racist as they were before. Britain is still racist because it believes that it is not.
I often cite a B.B.C. exposé called The Secret Policeman, about a vehemently racist policeman in the North Wales Constabulary. Thanks to the exposé he is no longer a policeman but you can guarantee that he is still racist. In my view, that is abject failure.
We cannot legislate how people think and feel. People are entitled to their own opinions, their own feelings, their own interpretations of things. They are allowed to like and dislike what they do, they are not choices; we are also entitled to disagree with the views and opinions of others but to tell somebody that they may not hold a view, because we don’t like it is not constructive and does nothing for social cohesion, it merely breeds resentment; people feel powerless and voiceless and take matters into their own hands. What we should be doing is encouraging debate, allowing people to discuss what they like and don’t like and why. Often, there will be no movement but sometimes, people’s minds can be changed but if we persist in Thought Police legislation, this will never happen and these so-called Brexit racists will be with us forever.
Since the referendum, hate crime has skyrocketed, though the government, press and the people who voted Leave for bigoted reasons will try to deny it, shout you down and sweep it under the carpet but that’s the truth of it, just take that poor Polish bloke in Lincolnshire who was minding his own business on his phone when he was set upon by a gang of arseholes for no reason at all and a week later when there was a march in his memory, they were attacked too, there’s plenty of other stories across the country, it’s sickening to see what the country has become, it’s distasteful and vile to all senses, it makes me ashamed to be British!