Channel 4's sanctimonious moralising is the last gasp of the old, pro-migration regime

Yahoo

11-02-2025

Good news: I've just watched the first two instalments of Channel 4's Go Back to Where You Came From, so you won't have to. The publicly-owned broadcaster could have commissioned a thoughtful programme which explored the complexities of illegal migration, challenging both the tendency in human nature to be hostile to strangers and the easy sympathy of those who can't see any limit to our welcome to refugees. Instead it has given us a hectoring documentary seemingly dreamt up with one goal in mind: to convince us that anyone who dissents from its creators' high moral principles is a heartless bigot.
The premise is this: six 'ordinary' Brits are dropped in Raqqa and Mogadishu to experience the hardships of life there, and follow the perilous path many take to Britain. Two of the participants are pro-migration, four are anti – in a 'get the Royal Navy to set landmines off Dover beach' kind of way. This quartet begins by declaring they won't change their position, though by the end of episode two, one already has and another is progressing nicely along her journey to redemption.
There's no nuance, no measured discussion of the issue. We suspected Channel 4 had an agenda going in: its head of documentaries said that to 'be able to challenge – and wrestle with – these views, we need to be able to air them... Otherwise... we end up with combustible events like last summer's race riots.' It must have been awkward when it emerged the 'anti-racist' participant Bushra Shaikh once posted that European Jews are a 'bunch of lying scumbags' and claimed 'nobody is born gay. It's a choice'.
And the inconsistencies don't end there: Shaikh believes a large proportion of people in Britain are 'thick as s---' and 'greedy'. Her fellow pro-migrant confesses she is 'ashamed to be British'. Yet both insist that the world's refugees should come here. The UK is a racist hell-hole – and must be open to all.
We live in an era when millions are unavoidably on the move. There are now 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and nearly twice that in Turkey. Around 1 million people in Germany, following Angela Merkel's 'Wir schaffen das', have a Syrian passport. There are close to 300,000 Somali refugees living in Kenya, and more than 250,000 in Ethiopia.
It is inconceivable that we could accommodate even a small minority of these unfortunate people without massive and unacceptable changes to our way of life. Since 2018, more than 150,000 have endangered their lives by crossing the Channel in flimsy dinghies.
And the costs are potentially astronomical: a University of Amsterdam study estimated that the net lifetime cost of asylum migration to the Netherlands averages around £400,000 per immigrant. Yet the UK's public sector net debt is around 97 per cent of GDP, we haven't balanced the books in more than 20 years, and there are no credible plans to cut government spending. How do we afford it?
I felt nothing but sympathy when, during the documentary, we were introduced to a young Somalian refugee living in an internally displaced persons camp with her seven children. But at no stage did Channel 4 seek to answer how the UK could meet the cost of housing, treating and educating those children, nor how doing so might affect existing citizens here, particularly our poorest.
Many believe we have an obligation to certain groups – Ukrainians escaping Putin's illegal war or Hong Kongers to whom we made commitments, for instance – and I count myself among them. But news today that six Palestinians successfully claimed asylum under the Ukraine Family Scheme, their rights to a family life under Article 8 of the ECHR trumping the fact they were outside the rules, is a warning that any regime we put in place risks being turned into a backdoor route into Britain. For all the talk of deterrence from our politicians, they too often achieve the opposite.
Go Back to Where You Came From will change few minds beyond those of one or two of the participants. If anything, its creators have uncovered the extent to which the debate on illegal migration has moved on. Though they may have believed that viewers could only draw one conclusion, the field of acceptable speech on this issue has widened. Attitudes have shifted. Even Labour is staging anti-illegal migration photo ops.
All of which means we can finally begin serious debate over how we best help those living these wretched existences with what limited resources we have – through trade, perhaps, or with a functioning asylum system – and stop the tedious moralising.
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