The Gorton and Denton by-election should act as a very serious wake-up call to the entire country: it is a harbinger of what is to come for our urban areas of Britain. When you have election material going out in an English constituency in Urdu and Punjabi [Ed.: as well as in English], campaigns being fought almost exclusively along ethnic and religious lines, something has gone very seriously wrong, and we need to have an honest conversation about the direction of travel in our country.

One man who has been prepared to speak out openly is Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He said, in a recent interview that drew much attention, that Britain had been “colonised by migrants”. While his choice of language was perhaps overly emotive, he is, fundamentally, right about the scale of recent migration, which is undeniable.
There are now very significant areas of urban Britain where integration has completely failed. The sheer scale and pace of immigration that we have witnessed under the Conservatives and Labour has been without any historic precedent, and has made even basic levels of assimilation by new arrivals absolutely impossible.
Just during the period that is referred to as the Boris Wave, 2021 to 2024, Priti Patel, the then-Home Secretary, now shadow Foreign Secretary
(but it’s a new team apparently…), allowed more than 3.8 million people to come to the UK, overwhelmingly from outside of Europe, and 86% of those came, not on work visas, but as dependents, students, or via health/care and humanitarian routes. This short period alone changed the foreign-born population of the UK from 16% to 19.6% in a matter of years. In 2004, 5.3 million people in Britain were foreign-born: today, that figure is more than 13 million. By 2035, it is estimated that 1 in 4 people living in Britain will be foreign-born. There are now already over one million people living in Britain who either speak no English or virtually no English. That is the scale of the immigration failure our country is now dealing with. It is totally unsustainable. We need a radical change of direction on immigration, and also to our electoral system. On immigration, Reform UK will end Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) and reverse as much of the Conservatives’ Boris Wave as possible. We will aim for net negative legal immigration going forward, taking a far tougher approach to illegal migration: estimates suggest the number of people living in the UK unlawfully currently runs into the hundreds of thousands. On electoral reforms, we will end non-British Nationals voting in our elections, end postal votes for all but the genuinely disabled and very elderly, and take a zero-tolerance approach to coercive “family voting” which was reported by independent observers Democracy Volunteers in Gorton and Denton.
We need to get serious about the state of our country. Failing to address these trends risks allowing sectarian politics to take root in areas where integration has already faltered.
Thomas Gargrave
Reform UK Dorset

Surely the primary duty of any democratically elected government is to protect the people it serves? And that must include all the people, not just those favoured by whichever political party is in power.

So why, time and time again, have successive UK governments failed us in this duty? Could it be because money talks? Or is it just a coincidence that many of the politicians who strongly oppose action on the environment receive funding, one way or another, from sources with fossil fuel interests?
The most serious dereliction of duty by the present Labour government has been its resolute refusal to adequately acknowledge and deal with the severity of the environmental crisis that is clearly now upon us. The Government’s failure to engage with and promote the National Emergency Briefing (NEB) in November last year, and the subsequent lack of reporting of the event by most of the media, effectively withheld vital information from the general public.
To counter this, the NEB organisers are producing a film of the event called the Peoples’ Emergency Briefing (PEB), and environmentalists around the country are arranging public screenings. There will be a number of such showings here in North Dorset sometime in April and May, so watch this space and contact me if there is somewhere you would like to have the film shown, including village halls, church halls and other community spaces,
The present first past the post/winner-takes-all electoral system gives us governments that only represent a minority of the electorate. Proportional representation can’t come soon enough, but in the meantime, there are clear signs that voters are increasingly rejecting the lies and toxic divisiveness of right-wing rhetoric that has dominated the conversation for far too long. The recent election of a fifth Green MP in the Gorton and Denton constituency has been a much-needed breath of fresh air.
Green Party membership has surged again and is now three times what it was just five months ago.The days of two-party politics are over, and we can look forward with hope and determination to create a better future together.
Ken Huggins
North Dorset Green Party

America’s restless view of its global role reveals a superpower long on strength yet short on patience, writes MP Simon Hoare

I have not long finished reading A Short History of America from Tea Party to Trump – an informative, slim volume by former editor of the The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins. It is full of interesting snippets of information, and worth a read. A theme he seeks to trace is how America views its role in the world. The early colonists maintained a close interest in Britain’s affairs, not least because they were ‘governed’ by the Crown. Following the War of Independence, the Founding Fathers maintained a determined and deliberate disengagement from the ‘old’ world, as they were the ‘new’. They studiously took no interest in world affairs, and this doctrine broadly held firm until America’s entry in the First World War – but it was short-lived, as their late entry into the Second World War all too clearly demonstrated.
A land, many argued, which was self-sufficient in resources need look nowhere else for its prosperity and security. Monroe and Wilson produced their ‘Doctrines’, but in the post-1945 world, as the British Empire retracted and naval supremacy vanished, America stepped up to be the policeman of the world, positioning itself as the ultimate defender of freedom, sovereignty and democracy.
The rest, as they say, is history – and so well known as not to require regurgitation here.
The really interesting point that Jenkins highlights is the shortness of American patience. He believes this is the reason that the US has never had an empire in the geo-political and administrative sense of that term. Spheres of influence? Yes. Dependent semi-autonomous countries? Yes. But an administrated empire? No.
He contrasts this with Britain’s approach – establish trading links and partnerships; secure a foothold; forge alliances; commit to the long term … and before you know it an empire upon which the sun never set is created. British long-termism and patience, or the tortoise approach, beating the American short-term, in-out, hare.

A moveable feast
I wrote the above the day following the latest US/Israeli attack on Iran, and the concomitant reprisals. Iran (the world’s 17th largest country by land mass and population) sits leaderless and under attack. Are the Middle East – and the world – better without the Supreme Leader? Of course. But to claim it is safer is a little premature.
As we saw recently in Venezuela, the US seemed content to replace a Super Villain President with a Villain President. Mr Putin is without doubt more dangerous and destabilising, yet Mr Trump prefers to play diplomatic footsy with him. While David Cameron was right when he said, in relation to Libya, ‘all because one cannot do good everywhere does not mean you should not seek to do good somewhere’, it should not be a vain hope that there is at least some moral consistency in the approach. With the US, it appears to be a more movable feast. Perhaps Trump takes his lead from another former British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, who declared that Britain had no friends, only interests.
The ordinary, put upon and oppressed Iranian will really not know what to do now. They will remember Iraq’s Marsh Arabs – urged to rise up and be supported by the West, only to do the former, find themselves abandoned by the latter and oppressed violently by those they rose against. Will the Shah-in-exile be dusting off the Peacock Throne? Will America, by the time you are reading this, have gone further? Will the Revolutionary Guards have turned their swords into ploughshares?
Will there be jubilation on the road to freedom in Tehran, or will there be silent anxiety behind closed doors? Hope beaten by experience.
We frankly do not know. The one thing we have to hope is that America, having started something, has the patience to see it through.
Another failed state is something the region cannot afford nor the rest of the world welcome.