'Accepting these migrants is a huge mistake'

She always gets a load of abuse on social media. One of the most brave writers out there at the moment!. Do you agree?.

Melanie Phillips



Britain can’t be expected to take in a flood of displaced people that will alter the cultural balance of the country for ever

In Germany, posters saying “Refugees welcome” and “Nobody is illegal” have been appearing at bus stops and demonstrations. At a rally in Oxford last weekend, demonstrators held up home-made placards saying “We welcome refugees (given the chance)” and “We are all human”.

These people are merely telling us about themselves. Public expressions of compassion signify that a person is good. Their absence demonstrates heartlessness. This has been called “virtue signalling”, or mandatory emoting, and it has now reached its crazy apotheosis in the great migration crisis.

In a measured response to the refugee hysteria, David Cameron has balanced compassion with the public interest. Over five years, Britain will take 20,000 people from refugee camps bordering Syria.

The left promptly denounced this number as pitiful. Labour’s leadership hopeful Yvette Cooper further complained that Britain should take in some migrants who had already reached Europe. But doing so would further incentivise people-smuggling and cause yet more to drown in the Mediterranean. Moreover, since an unknown number of those thus accepted would be supporters of Isis or other Islamist factions, it would endanger national security.
The real point, though, is the category error. This is not a humanitarian refugee crisis. It is a political migration crisis: an enormous and unprecedented movement of peoples from the developing to the developed world which threatens to engulf Europe.
It’s complicated. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of persecution, which clearly doesn’t apply to the majority of these people who are not running for their lives.

Even the family of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose drowned body provoked this mass outpouring of publicly proclaimed compassion, weren’t desperate to reach sanctuary at all. They had already been living in safety for three years in Turkey.
At the same time, calling this tide of people economic migrants won’t do. Some undoubtedly are just seeking prosperity. But others understandably want to leave countries where they know they have no future.

This is because the Arab and Muslim world is disintegrating into chaos, war and terror. The ascendancy of radical Islam is producing untold barbarism. The West-imposed model of the nation state is collapsing into tribal warfare. A dying culture has turned murderously upon itself while trying simultaneously to conquer the wider world.

Given this convulsion of an entire civilisation, the line we are being fed that Britain and Europe have a moral duty to take hundreds of thousands of those who are affected is spectacularly misguided.

First, why is this our responsibility? The Gulf states have not volunteered to take a single refugee. But isn’t this migration principally the responsibility of the Arab and Muslim world?

Second, the idea that Britain and Europe can accommodate this flood of people is delusional. According to the UN, by the end of last year almost 60 million people had been forcibly displaced from their homes. Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum.

Britain certainly can’t take them. Public services are already being stretched to breaking point, with a record population being further swelled by an unsustainable annual net immigration of a third of a million people.

Migrants are arriving in Europe in ever-increasing numbers because it is telling them they are welcome. Germany says it will take in up to 800,000 this year. In Italy, where the government has decriminalised illegal immigration, tens of thousands of migrants are pouring in every month from Libya and are being dumped in makeshift camps in town squares or train stations.
The emotional public reaction to the picture of drowned Aylan Kurdi is making things worse. Travel agents in the Lebanese port of Tripoli have reported a 30 per cent rise in bookings for Turkey, from where so many migrants set off for Europe, in the past week.

The consequences of this will change Europe for ever. The vast majority of this tide are Muslims. The UN estimates 70 per cent of these people are young men. If they settle in Europe, their families will probably follow.

Europe’s culture will therefore be transformed. Angela Merkel has already admitted Germany will be changed by this “breathtaking” influx.
At the same time, Britain is keeping out Christian refugees. As Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has eloquently protested, Christians in the Middle East have been crucified, beheaded, raped, forcibly converted and ethnically cleansed. Yet our government has so far refused requests to grant asylum to Christians trying to flee Iraq and Syria. With few exceptions such as Poland and the Czech Republic, Europe’s Christian countries are shunning Christian refugees from Islamist terror while opening their borders to hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, has said Europe should only let in Christians. For that, he has been denounced as a Nazi. But this lemming-like attitude will itself ensure that the spectre of fascism in Europe becomes a reality.
If people are abandoned by a liberal ruling class that stigmatises as Nazis all who wish to defend their culture, they will be pushed into the arms of real racists and fascists. In France, Marine le Pen of the National Front is poised to exploit the anger at what is happening. So are the ultra-nationalist Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece and Vlaams Belang in Belgium.
In Britain, there has been no outpouring of compassion over the children murdered by Islamists in Syria or Iraq. No homes have been volunteered to accommodate enslaved and mutilated Somali girls.

There was no support for bombing President Assad’s army in Syria. There is no support for the boots-on-the-ground war necessary to stop Isis. There is no support for taking out the Iranian regime behind Assad’s slaughter.
Instead, as part of the Iran nuclear deal, the UK government has agreed to make available to the Iranian regime $150 billion in sanctions relief, which will enable it to create even more refugees, which Europe will then tell itself it is obliged to take in.

“Virtue signalling” is the opposite of a moral position. It entails a form of emotional bullying which is as self-destructive as it is delusional. The migrant crisis is where confused, demoralised Europe seals its fate.

If it was left to the Liberal lefties in this country, we would be living in a Britain where Muslims would be in a majority within 20 years, hope I'm dead by then

If it was left to the Liberal lefties in this country, we would be living in a Britain where Muslims would be in a majority within 20 years, hope I'm dead by then

me too

I think I'm missing something here. We have a health service that regularly cancels operations, has lengthy queues at A&E, and a shortage of nurses due to lack of funds, people dying while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, fire stations and local police stations closing due to lack of funds, genuine claimants losing their benefits due to lack of funds, all of us having to wait longer before we will get a state pension because there's not enough money in the pot, and people living on the streets due to lack of affordable housing and an increase in food banks throughout our country. Who is going to pay for all the migrants, because they won't have paid anything into the system which is unable to cope right now, before they even arrive.

She's right. Merkel sees the migrants as Germany's answer to their labour problem so they stay competitive. She is playing with fire with this 'university project' social engineering, much like labour did under Blair with unprecented immigration. Those who say that 20,000 is not enough are not living in the real world. 20,000 is 20,000 too many. If anything, we should be deporting those who are here and shouldn't be. And that number is eye-watering.

germany's population will reduce over the years, here we will be the most populous country in europe despite having a land mass much smaller than germany, spain, france etc.

we are taking our fair share of refugees, its a shame countries like UAE and the other gulf nations refuse to take any syrians, otherwise there would be space for every refugee to live in safety.

She's right. Merkel sees the migrants as Germany's answer to their labour problem so they stay competitive. She is playing with fire with this 'university project' social engineering, much like labour did under Blair with unprecented immigration. Those who say that 20,000 is not enough are not living in the real world. 20,000 is 20,000 too many. If anything, we should be deporting those who are here and shouldn't be. And that number is eye-watering.

No its not. The only way Britain is going to get out of its financial mess is to build up a strong enough economy to cover the costs of a generous public sector and continue making a surplus each and every year. This is the only way to tackle it and a mass influx of migrants is exactly what is needed as it will help keep industries like the agricultural industry going. Alternatively, Britain can continue deluding itself that being overly reliant on a service sector is going to end well, rack up more debts and then the British population, rather than having their cake and eating it, will be having sod all because you'll all be in the very poverty of having little of what you need as the Germans and Americans during the great depressions.

She's right. Merkel sees the migrants as Germany's answer to their labour problem so they stay competitive. She is playing with fire with this 'university project' social engineering, much like labour did under Blair with unprecented immigration. Those who say that 20,000 is not enough are not living in the real world. 20,000 is 20,000 too many. If anything, we should be deporting those who are here and shouldn't be. And that number is eye-watering.

No its not. The only way Britain is going to get out of its financial mess is to build up a strong enough economy to cover the costs of a generous public sector and continue making a surplus each and every year. This is the only way to tackle it and a mass influx of migrants is exactly what is needed as it will help keep industries like the agricultural industry going. Alternatively, Britain can continue deluding itself that being overly reliant on a service sector is going to end well, rack up more debts and then the British population, rather than having their cake and eating it, will be having sod all because you'll all be in the very poverty of having little of what you need as the Germans and Americans during the great depressions.

II always enjoy reading your posts as you back up your arguments with some decent detail and you have a good perspective. We'll have to disagree on this one though. Mass uncontrolled immigration in the UK under Blair has been disastrous for the UK, both economically and socially as we have all seen. This is why immigration was a key issue during the elections - people have have simply had enough. And that was before this new crisis. I'm certainly not anti-immigration but it needs to be controlled whilst looking after your own first.

She's right. Merkel sees the migrants as Germany's answer to their labour problem so they stay competitive. She is playing with fire with this 'university project' social engineering, much like labour did under Blair with unprecented immigration. Those who say that 20,000 is not enough are not living in the real world. 20,000 is 20,000 too many. If anything, we should be deporting those who are here and shouldn't be. And that number is eye-watering.

No its not. The only way Britain is going to get out of its financial mess is to build up a strong enough economy to cover the costs of a generous public sector and continue making a surplus each and every year. This is the only way to tackle it and a mass influx of migrants is exactly what is needed as it will help keep industries like the agricultural industry going. Alternatively, Britain can continue deluding itself that being overly reliant on a service sector is going to end well, rack up more debts and then the British population, rather than having their cake and eating it, will be having sod all because you'll all be in the very poverty of having little of what you need as the Germans and Americans during the great depressions.

II always enjoy reading your posts as you back up your arguments with some decent detail and you have a good perspective. We'll have to disagree on this one though. Mass uncontrolled immigration in the UK under Blair has been disastrous for the UK, both economically and socially as we have all seen. This is why immigration was a key issue during the elections - people have have simply had enough. And that was before this new crisis. I'm certainly not anti-immigration but it needs to be controlled whilst looking after your own first.

Socially, I'm inclined to agree with you as it has led to pocketed segregated communities, an increasing strain on public resources due to a lack of investment in them and tensions have also risen since the economic crash which has piled a lot of pressure on millions around the world, including the economic pressure chamber that is the UK. Can I see why people are so frustrated? I can, but I'd rather blame those really responsible, the government and the elites they are subsidising with SME owners money, as opposed to the people in pursuit of a better life.

Economically however, immigration has been great for the UK. The main problems have been caused by ridiculous and gutless social policy, which was brought in by Labour with the intention of flooding the country with migrants in an attempt to boost their core voting population. Rather than actually put in place decent socio-economic policy that allowed economic needs to be met at a steady pace whilst socially integrating these migrants in local communities, they opened the doors to them. Now, from 2005 onwards, just after the Poles arrived, the British economy had a fairly decent little spike up and boom due to their added productivity in the market which actually helped quite a few industries out. Obviously, a couple of years later events panned out as they did and that growth was lost.

Personally, and its of course only my opinion, but what has crippled the UK economically is bad governance in terms of expenditure on public services, the crippling of SME's in favour of the corporate elite putting a chain on smaller companies who now find it much harder to make more money - this would stimulate the economy, create more jobs and we'd actually see the benefits of true free market capitalism at work. However, we should have also realised that some parts simply need to be controlled by the public sector to ensure those at the bottom and the middle class do not feel the pinch when using things like the railways - a lot of developing Europe is now benefitting from a freer market with less regulation plus great public services and lower taxation.

Furthermore, the UK has gone into a moral decline socially as people are struggling so much that they are being forced to put money first in a dire attempt to make ends meet as opposed to not struggling and having a better social life. This has all led to a divided non-cohesive society that plays right back into the hands of the political and corporate elites. Also, when I say people who are less well off, I mean the 99%, not just people claiming benefits or in-work benefits. Even SME owners are struggling for many reasons. Also, the UK should have kept a lot more things in-house in terms of manufacturing, stopped the over-reliance on technology in many areas to get people back into work and focused on a person-centric economic model.

As for your comments on me, thank you.