It wasn’t so much the content of the government’s immigration bill as the language. That was what really got to people. Even Nigel Farage said he would have dialled it down a bit. We were at risk of becoming an island of strangers, said Keir Starmer. Going out of the front door had become a high-risk endeavour. Too many foreigners you might meet on the street. Them and their funny languages. Coming over here, working for the NHS, paying their taxes. Whatever next?
Incalculable. That was the damage immigrants had caused. And Keir should know. Because he had spent days – make that weeks – trying to calculate it. And he had had to give up, because the foreigners had made it far too difficult for him to reach a figure. That’s the thing with foreigners. Always trying to shift the goalposts. But if Starmer knew one thing, it was that this country was going to the dogs. And he knew precisely who was to blame.
