Max Hastings and the BNP

Max Hastings has written a lengthy article in today's Mail about the BNP. How original. The thrust of it is that because the main three political parties have failed to deal with 'uncontrolled immigration' (a nicely unbiased phrase of course) the concerns that people have about the issue have not been addressed. And so people vote for the BNP.

Needless to say, misinformation about immigration by the media isn't mentioned anywhere. Indeed, manipulator of statistics and language Andrew Green from Migrationwatch is hailed as a hero 'whose relentless, but calm and objective, barrage of statistics is often criticised but never plausibly disputed'. Never disputed by the Mail certainly, but not never disputed (see this blog and 5CC).

So here are a few of the points Max raises. We'll begin with population:

On the Government's own, almost certainly understated, numbers, our population will pass 70 million by 2028. It could reach 80 million in the course of the century. We are the most overcrowded country in Europe, save Malta. Some 24 per cent of all births in this country are to foreign-born mothers.

And, for comparison, here is an excerpt from the BNP manifesto on immigration:

Britain’s population is now over 60 million and rising, solely due to immigration. Not only is Britain increasingly overcrowded, but the fact is that a country is the product of its people and if you change the people you inevitably change the nature of the country...Non-indigenous births will soon account for more than half of all the babies born in Britain.

Hmm. What about education? Max says:

Today, there are 300 primary schools in England where more than 70 per cent of pupils - nearly half a million children - use English only as a second language. It is unlikely the virtuous liberals of any major political party send their own children to such schools. I doubt that they would be happy if they had to do so.

The BNP says:

Fourteen percent of all primary school children do not have English as a mother tongue...At least 316 primary schools in England have a large majority of children whose first language is not English.

On identity, Max says:

Many thoughtful, educated people...use such phrases as 'It's not our country any more', and 'I don't feel I belong in the place where I grew up'.

While the BNP states:

these facts point inexorably to the overwhelming and extinguishing of Britain and British identity under a tsunami of immigration...uncontrolled immigration is leading to...a breakdown in community spirit.

On new arrivals, Max writes:

Most new arrivals come from the Third World, at a rate which is increasing the national population by almost one per cent every two years.

The BNP:

At least twenty percent of the currently resident population were either born overseas or are descendants of foreign-born parents. The vast majority of these foreign-born residents are of Third World extraction.

From Max:

There are also heavy health costs...A few years ago, tuberculosis was all but extinct in Britain. Today, there is a striking increase in reported cases, 65 per cent of them involving patients not born in Britain, with 21 per cent Africanborn. Hepatitis B cases have almost doubled in six years, to 325,000, 96 per cent of these involving patients born outside the UK.

From the BNP 2007 Mini manifesto:

'Health tourists' are costing the NHS £2billion a year, and diseases such as TB and AIDS are on the increase as a result of immigration.

Max quotes the 2008 House of Lords report that 'brutally dismissed' claims immigration benefits the UK:

The peers concluded that, contrary to New Labour propaganda, immigration has had 'little or no impact' on the economic well-being of Britain and offers 'insignificant' benefits to the existing UK population.

Whereas the BNP wrote on 15 November 2008:

The much trumpeted establishment claim that mass immigration has benefited the economy has been blown out of the water as experts told the House of Commons that immigration had brought virtually no economic benefit to Britain.

Max:

It is sometimes suggested that migrants offer useful cheap labour. But there is no really cheap labour in a welfare state. Each new arrival represents an additional burden on policing, health, education and infrastructure which must be paid for. Many police forces have expressed concern about the pressures and costs imposed by the huge influx of migrants.

The BNP:

The current open-door policy and unrestricted, uncontrolled immigration is leading to higher crime rates, demand for more housing (driving prices out of the reach of young people), severe extra strain on the environment, traffic congestion, longer hospital waiting lists, lower educational standards, higher income taxes, lower wages, higher unemployment, loss of British identity, a breakdown in community spirit, more restrictive policing, higher council taxes, a shortage of council homes, higher levels of stress and unhappiness and a more atomised society.

Higher levels of stress and unhappiness?! Migrants are being blamed for that too now? Anyway, Max goes on that:

Scarcely one of Britain's mainstream politicians is anywhere to be seen in a debate of vital concern for our national future. ...an issue about which much of the country cares more than the recession, health, education, Europe - the cultural identity and population stability of the island in which we live.

The BNP:

All it means is that they wish to preserve their identity and national existence. This is all the British National Party seeks for Britain - the right to be British. All the other parties shy away from this issue.

Max does call the BNP 'repulsive' and yet, as shown, has written an article full of BNP talking points. There is not a single sentence in the whole wretched piece where he mentions anything positive from immigration, or the enormous contribution immigrants have made to British society over the years. And yet he is wondering why people are voting for the BNP and concludes that it is all the fault of politicans. A little look closer to home might do him, and everyone, the world of good. Articles in (apparently) respectable papers about disease-ridden, resource-stealing, identity-destroying immigrants feeds the BNP agenda exactly.