James Stephens

[James Stephens @Jogs89]

@WilliamClouston This is awful news but of course I understand. You did an amazing job and have put the SDP in a much stronger position. I wish you all the best for the future.

[James Stephens @Jogs89]

@England @FIFAWorldCup You all made us so proud over this tournament. Please keep Tuchel and build towards the next one. We are so proud of you all.

[James Stephens @Jogs89]

@WilliamClouston I am so sorry. Condolences to you and the family in this awful time.

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

My opening speech at @ARC_Conference today!

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

The Great British Delusion

As regular readers will know, for several years now, I have been trying to persuade anyone who will listen that if you want to address the widely-shared concern about the pace and scale of mass immigration - Britain’s most salient political issue - it might be helpful to understand what’s causing the problem in the first place.

The conventional explanation of mass immigration among critical commentators is that “woke ideologues” in the civil service and the political halls of power believe that bringing more people into Britain is an unquestionable moral good. On the fringes of the Right, some even murmur of various theories of the “Great Replacement” which range in emphasis from elites bringing in compliant and desperate foreign workers to avoid providing good working conditions and fair wages to native workers, all the way through to Jews conspiring to replace white people with third-world immigration. Whatever the exact flavour this perspective comes in, the idea is that mass immigration is happening for primarily ideological reasons.

Likewise, advocates of mass immigration believe that anti-immigration sentiment is also motivated by ideology (hating immigrants/being racist etc) rather than reality.

What has been clear to me for some time, however, is that both of these claims are only partially true. Yes, some, as New Labour advisor Andrew Neather explained, wanted to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”. Yes, many in Britain as a whole and in Westminster in particular think that immigration is an axiomatic moral good. The problem is, however, that this does not explain why a series of Conservative governments, elected on increasingly vociferous promises to bring immigration down to the “tens of thousands”, continued to ramp it up. Facing the threat of Farage, who tore chunks out of the Tory vote year after year, they instead proceeded to set new immigration records, culminating in 2023 when net annual immigration exceeded 900,000.

It’s also true that some people don’t like immigrants. But the idea that this motivates a significant portion of the opposition to mass immigration in a country like Britain is absurd. According to that infamous far-right, anti-immigrant rag The Guardian, British people are statistically some of the most welcoming towards immigrants in the world.

Put simply, both sides are misunderstanding what’s happening, often on purpose.

My view is that much of the concern about immigration comes from two practical realities.

First, mass immigration on this scale is necessarily displacing. I’ve only lived in Britain for 30 years, and no one can tell me that the country and especially its major cities have not been completely transformed in that time. Many of the people who live in London today are either unconcerned by or actively in favour of these changes. But that’s partly because most of the people who were concerned have left. Now multiply across every city in the country and many of their suburbs. You don’t have to dislike people to not want the area where generations of your family were born, lived and died to become alien to you within the space of two decades.

In that same timespan, the British people have been getting poorer. As I keep saying over and over, Britain’s GDP per capita is lower today than it was in 2007, before the Great Financial Crisis.

Ironically, this is also why parties of every stripe have brought in millions of people into the country: we don’t evaluate economic performance on GDP per capita. Instead, we measure GDP itself and itself alone. That is the equivalent of measuring how prosperous your household is without accounting for the number of people living in it. A household income of £100,000 per year is high (by British standards, at least - more on this later) but what matters a lot more than that is how many people are in your household. A single person living on £100,000 is in a very different position to a family of 5 who are effectively getting £20,000 a year each.

The explanation for why Labour and the Tories let immigration run rampant was best summed up by legendary investor Charlie Munger when he said “show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome”. If all you care about is the headline figure, why not hand a bedroom to your in-laws to top up your “prosperity” with their pension? When described like this, it sounds, frankly, insane, yet that is precisely what our politicians are incentivised to do. They are judged on the country’s total GDP. The easiest way to increase it when you’re busy strangling your economy with Net Zero, high taxes and endless regulations? Bring in more bodies.

This really isn’t complicated to understand so why do so many people in Britain, who clearly feel the economic pain, nonetheless refuse to see it? To see that mass immigration is an attempt by badly incentivised politicians to deceive them about what’s actually happening? Instead, they cling to their support for mass immigration and the seductive (but false) idea that they are struggling because “the rich aren’t paying their fair share”.

A report this week, however, has opened my eyes to another reason - one I had never considered...

[Francis Foster @francisjfoster]

As many of you know, I used to be a teacher… and that experience led me to write a book.

(Un)educated: My Life as a Teacher, and Why You Should Never Become One, is officially available for pre-order.

Pre-order link in the comments below. ⬇️

[GB News @GBNEWS]

'It was the scariest thing I've ever had to do. Finally seeing the man who did this to me was really hard.'

Teenager Abbie Johnson opens up to GB News on facing her sexual attacker in court.

📺 Freeview 236, Sky 512, Virgin 604

[James Stephens @Jogs89]

@thatsKAIZEN You did a brave thing. I suspect they pile onto you because you hold a mirror up to their faults. You have the cardinal virtue without which nothing else really matters, you have courage. You make the world a better place for it. Keep on being you!

[William Clouston SDP @WilliamClouston]

Please support ⬇️

[Gully Foyle #UKTrade @TerraOrBust]

Those asking for the UK to rejoin a customs union with the EU, are quite literally asking to put up the cost of thousands of types of goods.

Why would they want to make your shopping more expensive? Because they're obsessed with the EU, no matter the cost to you.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

Lucy Connolly, the Northamptonshire mother who was arrested last year for a post on X, has alleged that her 13-year-old daughter has been barred from attending her new school after the headteacher discovered Lucy was her mother.

According to Lucy’s, the school’s reason for the decision was that “racism doesn’t go down well at the school and that my daughter being there would cause a ruckus.”

No child should be denied a place at their chosen school because of their parents’ actions or because teachers disagree with their views.

Read more below 👇

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

🚨 We’ve now reached over 15,000 signatures on our petition!

David Lammy plans to scrap trial by jury — a right that dates back to Magna Carta. We can’t let that happen.

Juries are a bulwark of English liberty, particularly the right to free speech.

The David Lammy of 2020 called “criminal trials without juries a bad idea.” He was right.

We’re calling on the government to guarantee the right to trial by jury.

Defendants who justify their actions on free speech grounds are almost twice as likely to be acquitted in a Crown Court with a jury than in a magistrates’ court without one.

If you care about English liberty — especially free speech — ✍️ SIGN OUR PETITION https://t.co/xPotJM6DNO

[Chris Daw KC @crimlawuk]

Lame Lammy forgot something important this morning.

The presumption of innocence.

And the importance to most of us of not being convicted of a crime we did not commit.

If I were falsely accused of stealing an iPhone from Curry's this afternoon, with my whole life and career on the line, I would 100% want a jury trial.

And that is how it should be.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

🚨 Sign our petition to stop David Lammy’s assault on free speech!

@SpeechUnion is extremely concerned about David Lammy’s proposal to scrap the 800 year-old right to trial by jury.

Juries are a bulwark of English liberty, particularly the right to free speech. They are often the last line of defence against the authoritarian cancel-culture mob. 

We analysed Ministry of Justice data from 2017-25, comparing the acquittal rate for those charged with speech crimes in jury trials with non-jury trials and the results are quite startling.

For all offences, crown court juries acquitted 21.6 per cent of the time in the last eight years, whereas it's just 11.4 per cent in magistrates courts.

For speech-related cases, the acquittal rate in jury trials rises to 27.6 per cent, compared to 15.9 per cent in mags, and in the last three years juries have been even more likely to find defendants not guilty of speech crimes -- 32.1 per cent compared to 14.1 per cent.

It could not be clearer: if the right to trial by jury is scrapped, you'll be much more likely to find yourself banged up for exercising your right to free speech.

Sign below ✍️ 

https://t.co/xPotJM6DNO

[James Stephens @Jogs89]

@NewCultureForum @prwhittle I am so so sorry he was a true champion and defender of Britain and will be sorely missed. Sending all my love and thoughts to his loved ones.

[Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya]

Fact check: not locking down at all (like Sweden) would have saved lives in the UK.

Hard to believe how much money the UK spent on its sham covid inquiry.

[James Stephens @Jogs89]

@ATRightMovies

[James Stephens @Jogs89]

@joeroganhq @DrDStarkeyCBE would be fantastic on your show.

[Benonwine @benonwine]

Repost and drop a 👍 if you are going to wear a poppy this year?

[Charlie Peters @CDP1882]

EXCL @GBNEWS: Police Scotland failed to investigate a grooming gang in Glasgow.

Care records reveal that officers made a 'tentative inquiry' at a care home after a girl's name appeared in an investigation.

But they never spoke to her. Now she has spoken to me about her ordeal.