Brigadoon

“Brigadoon, Brigadoon, Blooming under sable skies. Brigadoon, Brigadoon, There my heart forever lies.

Let the world grow cold around us, Let the heavens cry above! Brigadoon, Brigadoon, In thy valley, there'll be love”.

Alphen, the Netherlands. 9 September. There is an old Danny Kaye film about a mythical Irish village called Brigadoon which appears to the people but occasionally and where all is perfect and problems such as they exist at all are reduced at a stroke to a merry metaphor. Since that bright, bad day ten years ago ended the age of the twin towers the Whitehall Village has become a political Brigadoon; fighting and appeasing the causes and consequence of 911 at one and the same time, with little idea of strategy or mission. It has been an awful decade for a Britain in which the disconnect between the governed and the unworldly governing class is now dangerously wide. Political correctness means that real issues are rarely confronted, only hinted at indirectly.

Elected representatives have been stripped of any meaningful influence as politics and law have become hopelessly entangled. Presidential but politically impotent prime ministers have been held to account by unelected lawyers whilst all became obsessed with serving that media mogul on the Sky. How the mighty are finally fallen. The cult of political celebrity has been little different in its vacuous waste from the celebrity culture that today obsesses Britain’s politically impotent masses.

Brigadoon has instead slipped into half-truths, half-policies and half-leaders. No voter has the desired government. Labour conned itself into power under the mantra of social democratic New Labour only to be captured by the Hard Left of the Party when an unelected and unelectable Gordon Brown was offered the chance to experiment on Britain. Today, the Coalition Government sees a small Liberal-Democratic minority exerting influence way beyond its meagre representation in Parliament, whilst the high-bureaucracy has become a focal point for competing ideologies as to how Britain should be run and its place and role in the world.

In Brigadoon there is no cultural or racial tension. In Britain lives are routinely being blighted by racism and intolerance. Indeed, as Brigadoon vowed to make Britain safe in the wake of 911, it simultaneously lost control of Britain’s borders. At least discrimination in Brigadoon is now more equally shared. Formal discrimination against the majority comes in the form of multiculturalism and ‘equal opportunities’. Employment today is offered not on the basis of quality or capability but race and gender. Those insidious little boxes on application forms asking for race and gender details are not simply for statistical purposes.

Beyond the bounds of Brigadoon an angry majority has instead been cowed into silence. Anti-racist and anti-discrimination campaigns simply pushed intolerance underground and at the same time made it worse. Too often too many take out their frustrations on minorities who, unfairly blamed for the fantasies of Brigadoon, not surprisingly huddle together for safety in urban ghettos. The indigenous population that could afford it has simply fled to the hills leaving the centres of many English cities dangerous places where poverty, hopelessness and too often hatred stalk the streets. At night and at weekends gangs and drunkenness rule the space law and order too easily abandoned. Today, a million of our young people are bereft of education, employment and training, and streets burn as police do nothing for fear of being accused of breaking politically-correct taboos. Damned if they act; damned if they don’t.

Even the very existence of Britain is now under threat. An enemy of the British state has virtually unchecked power in Scotland with his one professed aim to bring down the United Kingdom. The English of course are forbidden to comment on anything for fear of being accused of racism and/or imperialism. This is in spite of the regular provocations that now emerge from Edinburgh as their sons and daughters at Scottish universities suffer blatant fee discrimination. The broke and put upon English are however still expected to pay the Scots to stay in Britain and for the feral elite who ran Britain’s banks into the ground in their pursuit of greed.

Ten years on from 911 ‘Strategy’ has been done to death in Brigadoon; as empty a word as it is misunderstood. Trapped in the longest post-Imperial apology in history Brigadoon has been fighting and appeasing violent jihad at one and the same time. In the immediate aftermath the renowned British military was sent eastward to keep the threat at strategic distance, even as millions from some of the poorest and most conservative places on earth were allowed into Britain. And then came 7/7. Ten years on a thousand of our brave young men and women are dead and many more grievously-wounded fighting wars that cannot be won. The British military is broken, the wars un-won and London’s influence diminished the world over.

Ten years on Brigadoon has passed much of its authority to Brussels-doon and the European Onion in an attempt to create the perfect alibi for failure. It is an EU that is patently and patiently dragging its richer members down into the depths to pay for its failed members like some super-institutional Titanic. Huge burdens are now imposed upon Britain with absolutely no benefits to show for it, other than the strangely abstract that Brigadoon claims.

And yet there is still hope. The generosity of the British people remains as their support for starving millions the world over attest. Although Brigadoon, true to form, has exploited that generosity by getting the British people to pay for India’s nuclear weapons programme and armed forces. And, whilst the British spirit is bowed, it is not as yet broken. There is a genuine thirst to be proud again and many of the incomers simply want to be given the chance to be British. It will take at least ten years to recover from a disastrous decade but if Brigadoon can be kept out of our lives the good will and common sense of the massive majority of ordinary Britons of all creeds and colours will prevail.

“Brigadoon, Brigadoon, Blooming under sable skies. Brigadoon, Brigadoon, There my heart forever lies. Let the world grow cold around us, Let the heavens cry above! Brigadoon, Brigadoon, In thy valley, there'll be love”.

Julian Lindley-French

Sleepwalking into a Nuclear Nightmare

"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita

Alphen. The Netherlands. 7 September. With the West deep in sombre remembrance of 911, a new and dangerous shift in the nuclear balance is taking place in the shadows.  There is a New Nuclear Realpolitik afoot that is shaping today’s world... and tomorrow's.

Iran is moving patiently towards a nuclear weapons system. Taken together the empty commitment made towards a global nuclear zero, calls by the strategically-illiterate to remove the last US nuclear forces from Europe, and the out-dated US-Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) make the world’s nuclear future more dangerous not less so. The entire global arms control architecture is in urgent need of renovation if it is to be relevant to this century not the last.

Iran is playing clever. According to the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) Tehran will soon begin enrichment of weapons-grade uranium at a new underground site near Qom. Iran has been swift to remind the world that its intentions are entirely peaceful. At Bushehr the first nuclear power reactor to generate electricity in the Middle East began fuelling up in late August. It could be operational within a few months, although it will more likely take a year or so. In effect, Iran is using the civil programme to remind the international community of the failure of the so-called Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) to fulfil their side of a bargain struck 43 years ago in the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under the NPT the Non-Nuclear Weapons States (NNWS) would be given assistance to develop peaceful nuclear energy in return for the Nuclear Weapons States divesting themselves of nuclear weapons at the earliest opportunity.

With Russian support the Bushehr plant complies with the NPT, and by keeping its civilian development on a separate track to its military programme Iran is complicating attempts to reveal the extent and scale of Iran’s current efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The West is of course huffing and puffing and some limited sanctions have been applied by the United Nations, but oil-rich Tehran has little concern for its image in the West. Rather, it aims to become the strongest actor in the region sitting at the crux of the Middle East and Central-South Asia and snubbing the West is a conscious part of that strategy.

Why should the World be concerned? First, Iran’s ambitions are putting Tehran on a collision course with nuclear-armed Israel, which has some 200 warheads at Dimona. Second, if Iran succeeds in upping its prestige amongst developing states by deploying such weapons then with India, Pakistan and North Korea all now established nuclear powers any hope of President Obama’s Global Zero will soon evaporate. Third, nuclear weapons act as the great equaliser for states the armed forces of which are relatively weak, such as Iran. In the event of, say, ten or more nuclear powers a whole new balance between deterrence and defence will be needed.

Europe is not being at all clever. Earlier this year Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway moved to have the remaining 200 or so European-based US nuclear warheads removed from their soil. The role of nuclear weapons is to offset weaknesses in conventional forces. However, these very same countries not only want rid of NATO’s cornerstone nuclear defence, but they are also savagely cutting their respective militaries AND trying to neuter missile defence. This is strategic illiteracy of breath-taking proportions.

The US could have been cleverer. By proposing a Global Zero of which there is little reasonable chance the hitherto dormant strategically-illiterate have once again become exercised. Nor were the implications of the 2010 START treaty fully thought through. Reducing nuclear weapons is a good thing and with some 23,000 warheads the world-over there is clearly work to do. However, focussing purely on an out-dated bilateral track with Russia not only beefed up an untrustworthy Moscow but more importantly (and inadvertently) actually offered incentives to the likes of China and India to build-up to US and Russian levels precisely so they can be seen as equals – and made such a goal attainable.  Strategic parity is precisely the essence of both countries’ national strategies.

Together, Iran, Global Zero and START 2010 have in effect killed the 1968 NPT – with nothing under consideration to replace it. Worse, US thinking reflects profound confusion in US strategy between Realpolitik and strategic political correctness. There is no European thinking of note.  Consequently, an out-of-date multilateral arms control treaty will be left in place for fear that to replace its failing structures could bring the whole edifice crashing down. This is not least because the West itself is on very dodgy ground in terms of compliance. Where is the nuclear logic in that?

Political risk must now be taken. The democratisation of mass destruction allied to globalisation is driving seventy-year old nuclear weapons technologies and their associated missiles into the strategic open far faster than arms control can stop it. Consequently, the leader powers are losing control over both the technology and likely end-users.

With the Non-Proliferation Treaty dying of old age what is needed is an entirely new treaty with new incentives, enhanced constraints and with an International Atomic Energy Authority that is truly fit for purpose. Those Europeans who want rid of US nuclear weapons (and what about British and French systems?) should for a moment take a strategic view and realise that in this anarchic, Realpolitik world empty-unilateralism is as dangerous as uncontrolled proliferation.

The nuclear genie is now out of its aged and cracked bottle. It is therefore time for the West to regain the nuclear high ground and negotiate whilst there is still a semblance of strength. If not we will sleepwalk into a nuclear nightmare.

Julian Lindley-French

When Think-Tanks Stop Thinking

“A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him”. Samuel Johnson

Alphen, The Netherlands. 5 September, 2011. Something strange happened to me last week. A leading London think-tank (which shall remain nameless) asked me to remove my affiliation as an Associate Fellow from my blog because in the words of the offending email, “I do not mince my words” and because my blog may be seen as the official position of aforesaid think-tank. Excuse me!

Associate fellowships, special professorships and the like have proliferated over recent years. They offer institutions free labour during a time of austerity in return for an affiliation that implies prestige. What happened to me is of course immaterial but what it implies is not; that think-tanks stop thinking and challenging for fear of offending the so-called ‘great and good’. Whatever happened to academic freedom?

There are two reasons why this is happening in London (and I have seen evidence of it elsewhere). First, some of the more traditional think-tanks have become too close to the Establishment. Consequently, their instinct is to validate rather than challenge Establishment thinking. As a result they become progressively co-opted by the Whitehall Village and thus add little to it. Second, there has been a host of new think-tanks in London over recent years most of whom support one political party/issue or another. Their mission is simply to justify the political positions of their political/vested interest masters. Sadly, whilst there are a few think-tanks still free to do what they should be doing – thinking, challenging and provoking – they are perilously few in number.

Thinking, challenging and provoking is also the overt mission of my blog. It is not without method or rigour. On occasions (dare I say) I may be wrong. However, when I challenge or provoke I do so after a lot of thought and supported by a lot of facts, and with many years of experience behind me. My goal is essentially simple; to fill with analysis and strategy the expanding gap between the abstractions into which government is retreating and the very different reality on the ground which real people see daily. In other words, I am trying to do what too many think-tanks now fail to do too often.

Implicit in this creeping vine of intellectual entanglement is a wider risk – the more sensitive the issue the greater the pressure for self-censorship driven on by the political correctness that now oozes from every fissure in political London. Of course, one must at all times be sensitive to the impact of ideas and words and I am acutely so. However, that must not stop free thought.

The ‘offending’ blog seems to have been “The Great Immigration Disaster” in which I analysed official figures and considered the impact on Britain’s social infrastructure from uncontrolled immigration. The fact is that Britain is my country and the pace and scale of immigration as confirmed by the official figures and the changes it implies for Britain – both positive and negative - represent one of the most profound and indeed strategic changes to British society ever seen. Thus, I have every right to consider it.

And yet here’s the rub; very few beyond the far Left or far Right are brave enough these days to consider this vital issue. This conspiracy of silence, which is not limited to immigration, reflects a lack of leadership at the very top – both on the Left and Right. It is a failure of leadership itself fuelled by fear and narrow political calculation that opens the way for the politics of hate.

The simple fact is that politicians are scared of dealing with difficult issues for which they have few or no solutions and their fellow-travellers in the think-tanks too often validate rather than challenge this. Cosy elites are always dangerous, but when free thought is either co-opted or simply quashed then there is something profoundly wrong.

Such insecurity also reveals a dangerous vulnerability at the heart of Britain’s elite. The British people still hang on to the now out-dated belief that Whitehall remains capable of dealing with all issues and establishing sound strategy as a result. In fact, the more sensitive the issue the more likely it is that Whitehall avoids it; and the more likely that think-tanks will take their cue from government.

The bottom-line is this; Whitehall’s inability to confront profound and sensitive issues explains why Britain is incapable of establishing sound strategy. The job of think-tanks therefore is to truly challenge orthodoxy, not to ratify it. And that means more than empty marketing slogans that appeal to government and corporate sponsors. All that does is to legitimise the group-think that inevitably leads to failure.

The alternative to moral courage? I see it here every day in the Netherlands the politics of which is dominated by a right-wing populist Geert Wilders. All he has done has filled the vacuum created by the failure of the intellectual class to challenge the governing class on issues of fundamental importance to society and the state.

The world is a safer place when think-tanks think, not merely pander. So, rest assured; I will not stop blogging, the views expressed herein are entirely my own, I will not mince my words and I will confront all and any issue I deem to be of strategic importance.

Oh, and I have also removed the offending affiliation. Their loss!

Julian Lindley-French

Thank You, Royal Wootton Bassett

Alphen, the Netherlands. 1 September, 2011. Every now and then politics is full of painful symmetries. Today saw the start of the long-heralded cuts in personnel of the British armed forces. Some 22,000 posts will be cut over the next four years with more possible on top. This represents over 10% of the force, with more likely to come.

Last night the people of a small, dignified Wiltshire town turned out for the last time in Sunset Service to mark their role in respecting Britain’s fallen soldiers. Since April 2007 Wootton Bassett has paid its respects to 345 fallen servicemen and women who have passed through the town on the return of their bodies from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some 2,000 people turned out on 18 August to pay silent tribute to Lt Daniel Clack of the 1st Battalion, The Rifles; the last body of a serving British soldier to be repatriated via neighbouring RAF Lyneham which will shortly close due to the cuts. Henceforth, Britain’s dead will return via RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire where the town of Carterton will take up the vigil.

The town’s mayor, Paul Heaphy, said last night that the service was the “last full measure of devotion” to those who had died.

In June President Obama said the people of Wootton Bassett marked the “best of British character”. From this October the title Royal Wootton Bassett is to be conferred upon the town by Her Majesty the Queen as a mark of royal respect. Yesterday the Union Flag was lowered one last time before being taken to the memorial garden at Brize Norton.

The wife of one servicemen when asked about the cuts said, “I don’t believe Mt Cameron and those involved in making the decision to cut the Armed Forces are fully aware of the true cost and impact that the stroke of their pens will have on those who served them so proudly”. I am sure the people of Wootton Bassett are, as are the rest of us who think about these things. But that is perhaps for another day.

Thank you, Royal Wootton Bassett. You are indeed the best of British; already royal to my mind in both spirit and generosity.

Julian Lindley-French

The Worst Journey in the World

Alphen, The Netherlands. 31 August, 2011. Seventy years ago this day the first Arctic Convoy set off from Scotland en route to Murmansk in Northern Russia. Between August 1941 and May 1945, 78 convoys comprising some 1400 merchant ships completed what Winston Churchill called, “the worst journey in the world” to deliver vital war supplies to Soviet Russia under a lend-lease agreement with the United Kingdom and United States.

The convoys were escorted by the ships of the Royal Navy, supported by units of the Royal Canadian and US navies. Over that period 85 merchant ships were sunk by enemy action, together with 2 Royal Navy cruisers, 6 destroyers and 8 other escort ships. Sinking was almost certainly fatal as life expectancy in the freezing waters of the Norwegian Sea and the Arctic Ocean amounted to a few minutes at best.

Operating under constant threat of air and U-boat attack from occupied Norway the convoys had to operate either in perpetual dark or perpetual light. Moreover, severe weather, fog, strong currents and the mixing of warm and cold waters not only made the use of ASDIC (sonar) difficult, but also greatly complicated convoy cohesion.

Keeping ships together was vital. In July 1942 convoy PQ17 suffered the worst losses of any convoy in World War Two. Fatally, following constant attacks by air and the threat from the German fast battleship Tirpitz (sister ship of the Bismarck), the convoy was ordered to scatter. Only 11 out of 35 ships made it to Archangelsk on Russia’s Arctic coast.

Hitler deemed the convoys to be of such strategic importance that intense efforts were made by the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine to disrupt them, but at an enormous cost to both services. On December 26, 1943 Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, flying his flag in the battleship HMS Duke of York and supported by the cruisers HMS Belfast, HMS Jamaica, HMS Norfolk and HMS Sheffield, trapped and sank the German battle-cruiser Scharnhorst by employing for the first time radar-controlled gunnery. In the Arctic twilight Duke of York straddled Scharnhorst with the first salvo from her 14 inch guns. On 12 November 1944 32 Royal Air Force Lancasters from Nos 9 and 617 (Dambusters) squadrons dropped the massive Tallboy bombs on the Tirpitz as she sat in Norway's Tromso Fjord. She rolled over and sank within minutes. In all the Germans lost 2 battleships, 3 destroyers and some 30 U-boats in addition to many aircraft.

The convoys provided essential support to a hard-pressed Soviet Union, particularly during the siege of Leningrad in 1941 and 1942 by delivering critical food and ammunition supplies. As the war moved towards its conclusion the Soviets insisted the convoys continue, mainly for symbolic reasons. In the end the Arctic Convoys proved a decisive victory for the Allies, but at an enormous cost in lives and ships.

Vital to that success was ULTRA intelligence gained as a result of the cracking of the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park in southern England. This enabled the Royal Navy not only to make the best use of its forces, but also provided the forewarning to route convoys around U-boat wolf packs and German surface raiders.

Seventy years on from what was an epic struggle which claimed the lives of thousands of men on both sides it is right that we pause and remember their sacrifice.

Julian Lindley-French

From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli?

“At the very time that Rome burned, he mounted his private stage and, reflecting present disasters in ancient calamities, sang about the destruction of Troy”. Tacitus on Nero

Alphen, The Netherlands. 29 August. Writing in Time.com Professor Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center in Washington gave me a bit of a kicking following my blog “Well Done, NATO”. I had suggested that NATO, the EU and its member-nations endeavour to support Libya’s National Transitional Council with the stabilisation and reconstruction of Libya. Gordon rather forcibly objected, citing failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is nothing wrong with that. I like a good Yank-Yorkshire punch-up. It moves the debate forward.  "What on earth are we thinking?" Gordon thundered.  Here is what I am thinking.

Now, before I am deemed to have offended the entire US Marine Corps – never a good idea - my use of the first line from the Marine Hymn is not a slur on them. Indeed, I have nothing but respect for the Corps. What concerns me is the apparent loss of America’s strategic mojo. Which brings me to my main concern; America’s is catching the European disease; ignoring threat because it is too expensive. If that is the case then American leadership is over and with it NATO.  And I for one am not (yet) prepared to accept that.

Gordon paints a picture of another Iraq and/or Afghanistan with tens if not hundreds of thousands of Western troops sent to Libya to fail to rebuild yet another Arab/Muslim country. I suppose it is a natural reaction to a decade of American and European strategic incompetence and growing American and European isolationism. Frankly, Iraq/Afghanistan fatigue has wreaked havoc with our strategic self-assurance. Gordon’s Hobson choice is thus; either flood Libya with ‘our’ troops, or do nothing.

I reject that choice. First, his suggestion that we the West have learnt nothing about stabilisation and reconstruction after ten years of faking it, botching it and generally making a mess is bogus. We have indeed learnt two rather important things: 1) that the outcome will never be Switzerland (Europeans never believed in that any way); and 2) if we do use what now constitutes the world’s leading pool of military and civilian stabilisation and reconstruction expertise it should only be in support of a government in transition...and with a reasonable hope of achieving it.

And here's the crux; Libya is also neither Afghanistan nor Iraq. Libyan human leadership capital is far better than that of either Iraq or Afghanistan. There is a middle class unlike in Afghanistan where it had been destroyed by the Soviets. Sectarianism of the sort we saw in Iraq is far less of a factor. Libya’s infrastructure has suffered far less damage than that suffered by Afghanistan and Iraq and with high-grade oil Libya can afford its own future.

Nor can we dither.  There is a power vacuum developing in Tripoli and it is vital we help the moderates on the National Transitional Council prevail. Not by sending huge numbers of Western forces, although the EU’s mythical humanitarian force needs to be stood up urgently. Rather, by patient support over key areas of governance and transition. Yes, a stabilisation force is indeed needed but one drawn from all countries in the International Contact Group (and beyond) and legitimised by UN mandate.

This is the crunch moment. The residents of Tripoli, which with Benghazi is the key to power in Libya are already complaining of a lack of life essentials – food, water, power supplies. The coming battle for Sirte, the last real stronghold of Gaddafi loyalists is likely to take place only because negotiations with the National Transition Council are failing against a backdrop of the very reprisal killings I warned about a week ago. The Berber minority have walked out of talks about future governance because a relatively small number of Islamists are now pushing for Sharia Law to be the law of the land,

The West therefore needs to use its expertise cleverly. Indeed, having paid such a high price to gain such expertise it would be a shame that that our collective strategic depression is leading to failure of both nerve and vision. Much of this expertise far from being a monstrous regiment can mainly be found amongst civilians in the public and private sectors, which Gordon Adam rather peevishly calls the providers of good will, advisers of merit and profit seekers. That is simply not fair.

And, I did indeed make the point that the Libyans must always be in the lead and a partnership established early and modestly to establish key needs and advice. The British are working with the Council to achive precisely that. But then again we are not American so anything we do does not count.

The bottom line is this; the southernmost tip of NATO/EU is only 294kms/182 miles from Tripoli.

The alternative is to do nothing and fiddle whilst Libya burns. How many refugees now crowd the shores of Lampedusa on their way to the rest of Europe? Expect a few more.

“From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli?” I wonder, Gordon.

Julian Lindley-French

The Great Immigration Disaster

Alphen, The Netherlands. August 26. I have just returned from a shopping expedition to Breda, the nearest town of significance to my home. I spoke to someone in a shop who asked me a really strange question. “Are you English?” he said. To which I of course replied yes. He then asked me if I was really 100% English. Apart from finding this somewhat intrusive – not untypically Dutch, I said yes. “You are a dying breed”, he ventured. Maybe not, but the latest statistics from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that in 2010 hyper-immigration into Britain continued unabated.

Britain is now heading rapidly towards a population of 70 million. It is a figure the islands simply cannot sustain. As such hyper-immigration now represents an existential threat to British society, culture and social infrastructure. The Whitehall Village is again failing the British people in a critical area whilst trying to impose silence on the people by accusing anyone brave enough to raise this critical issue of racism. It is not racist to express concerns about one of the most pressing challenges of the age. Common sense can no longer be suspended. As ever, I am prepared to put my head above the parapet and I am no racist. Try me!

The BBC of course covered the news in passing, preferring not to address any comment that might threaten the multicultural wonderland the BBC clearly believes in. Indeed, the BBC’s coverage of this matter stopped being objective some time ago.

Net immigration last year rose by 21% with 239,000 more people arriving in the UK than leaving. This is in itself a dangerously misleading figure for its masks the net loss of British people to the island which means the social and cultural impact is even higher than the figures suggest. The number of those emigrating last year stood at 336,000. Indeed, the ONS put long-term immigration (those coming to settle permanently) at 575,000 last year. This makes a mockery of the government’s stated intention to reduce net immigration to ‘tens of thousands’ by 2015. “Do the math”, as the Americans would say.

Now, for the sake of balance this figure could also reflect the legacy of the last Labour Government which not only lost control of Britain’s borders, but actively promoted hyper-immigration. I am prepared to give the government one more year to bring immigration under some form of control and show it has done so before I become really concerned.

Study is also a reason for much of the immigration, with some 228,000 students entering the country last year. On the one hand this is good news for Britain’s higher education sector, but many do not leave. Attempts to then enforce deportation are then blocked by the Human Rights legislation which has to all intents and purpose removed control of Britain’s borders from Whitehall. So, what do politicians do when they cannot deal with a crisis? They take their collective heads and place them collectively in the nearest deep pool of sand.

Nor is this an issue of race. The issue is mass. As I have said before, I do not care if Britons are white, black, yellow or whatever so long as they are loyal to the United Kingdom and to the values that underpin our society. As an immigrant myself here in the Netherlands my first duty is to the Dutch state, its people and its laws. This is something I take very seriously. Evidence in the UK would suggest that the obsession with multiculturalism is leading to a new phenomenon – British citizens who are loyal to another country.

What is particularly worrying is the marked increase of the number of immigrants from the so-called A8 countries in Eastern Europe. Again, I visit these countries a lot and they are full of hard-working, great people. However, the numbers coming to live permanently in the UK has increased from 5,000 in 2009 to 39,000 in 2010. Sadly, much are going straight onto welfare dependency or doing the kinds of jobs that would start Britain’s unemployed youth on the career ladder. As of August 2011 there are some 1 million 16-24 year old NEETs in Britain – not in education, employment or training. There are also some 43,000 claimants of British social security now living in Warsaw.

Immigration Minister Damian Green gave the usual limp-wristed response that EU laws prevent the government managing reciprocal, intra-EU migration. Well, sorry, but the migration is not reciprocal – it is all one way. I am all for managed migration, but that is the point – it is not managed. If this trend continues then London must begin to consider suspending EU treaties so that it can regain control of British borders.

The British people of all colours and creeds are rightly fed up with the failure of the Whitehall Village to regain control of hyper-immigration. It is a failure of politics, a failure of will and failure of management. Above all, it is failure of leadership. This leaves me with the most profound of concerns about the future of my country. It is so, so sad.

Get a grip, London!

Julian Lindley-French