Immigration

News that UK population growth has slowed was relayed with smug solemnity by the BBC.  A Government policy to reduce net migration was unmentioned whilst the mass xenophobia of the Brexit vote was, apparently, the cause.  Staffing of the NHS will collapse whilst fruit and vegetables will rot in the ground in the Fens.  No matter that there are still more than enough people coming in each year to populate a large town and that health and housing provision is not keeping pace.  But that’s enough of Laura and Kamal doom; cut now to the comely Katya in Brussels who dutifully repeats the EU briefing line.  But there is something I spot in her eyes that tells me she knows more than she is letting on – I think she gets the uncomfortable truth faced by the increasingly desperate EU leaders but, presumably, her bosses in the studio won’t let her spell it out?  It is the realisation that simply talking tough about mass migration is no longer enough to ensure political survival.