Reverting To Type

After the Wednesday Newsnight interview with David Cameron, the BBC and the papers have made much of his comments on immigration.

The Daily Mail and Telegraph believe that the Conservatives are reasserting their authority on issues which they have currently avoided such as immigration and crime, while the left-wingers at the BBC and Guardian have used David Cameron’s comments as an opportunity to present the Conservative party as returning to the core vote and ‘lurching to the Right’.

The reactions from Nick Assinder at the BBC and the neo-Marxist Seumas Milne in the Guardian were typical of the overall vein of the attacks launched on Mr Cameron. Yet, both miss the mark completely (and probably purposefully too) because in reality Mr Cameron has not said anything new than he hasn’t said before and thus cannot have moved to the Right.

Wednesday’s BBC Newsnight really was a first class example of how the news corporations (in this case the BBC) actually make the news and then report upon it – and in doing so, how they can both dictate and manipulate the political agenda.

Gavin Esler tried his hand at manipulation while questioning Cameron on immigration. He noticeably made great efforts to put the word ‘swamped’ into Mr Cameron’s mouth by constantly repeating it at least half a dozen times. This was most likely done so the BBC could have a headline report the next day saying that David Cameron had said ‘immigrants are swamping Britain’. As it was the Conservative leader didn’t fall into that trap.

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Controlling Immigration

David Cameron has been interviewed by BBC Newsnight on a variety of issues including green taxes, immigration and Shadow Cabinet outside interests.

However, his comments on immigration were of particular interest because, for the most part, Mr Cameron has avoided focusing on this topic in his quest to re-brand the Conservative party by approaching issues with which it is not normally associated.

Immigration to Britain is far too high as David Cameron pointed out in the interview, and has reached completely unsustainable levels during Labour’s ten year tenure, causing both widespread social friction, housing problems, and increased pressure on public services.

Opinion polls reveal that immigration is consistently among the top three most important issues that concern voters, and also show that Mr Cameron’s views reflect the majority of British opinion. Therefore it’s welcome news that Mr Cameron is at least tentatively discussing the issue, even if he is also discussing possible ‘green taxes’ too.

I think it’s also useful to contrast Mr Cameron’s Newsnight comments with an announcement on Sunday by Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman who said the problems of immigration and the ‘twilight world of illegality’ needed to be tackled by allowing the legalisation of illegal immigrants that ‘proved’ themselves.

When Asylum Seekers Escape

I was listening to Five Live radio in the car this afternoon. They were reporting on how a total of twenty six asylum seekers had escaped from a detention centre in Oxfordshire.

I cannot imagine that the government centre puts much effort into keeping its occupants under lock and key, and the fact that so many have escaped from that centre in recent months is testament to that.

Five Live interviewed a local man who lived close by to the centre over the phone about how he had apprehended one of the escapees in his back garden. The man went on to tell them that this was the third time it had happened recently, and said he would not be surprised if it happened again.

The man then expressed the view that those in the Asylum centre should be sent back to where they came from if their application had been failed, and that in not doing so the Government was costing taxpayers in this country a large sum of money to pay for the Asylum seeker’s constant upkeep in a centre which they continued to trash.

Needless to say, he was cut off very quickly by the BBC after those honest comments.