Sarah Vine's new book isn't just the most riveting political memoir for years, says A.N. WILSON: It's also deliciously entertaining proof that the class divide still runs though British society like a poisonous thread
Does social class matter? Does it even still exist? Most of us would say that for most of the time, class is a thing of the past.
The hereditary peers will soon no longer sit in the House of Lords. Senior politicians seem to be drawn from all classes and ethnicities. If the Deputy Prime Minister is Angela Rayner, a former teenage mum from a Stockport council estate, then the class system is surely dead and buried.
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The Sun
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Migrants in France branded ‘scum' by ‘hypocrite' French union boss whose cops are failing to stop boats crossing Channel
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He added: 'If France doesn't want these migrants, why should British taxpayers foot the bill for their transport, housing, and clothing? 'It's time we held other countries accountable for the continuing invasion of our shores. 'They're actively enabling Channel crossings because they'd rather shift the problem onto us.' Home Secretary Yvette Cooper last week slammed French officials for not intercepting boats at sea 'as swiftly as possible'. A record 1,195 people reached the UK in 19 small boats last Saturday and officials are preparing for a summer surge as the weather improves. MIGRANTS' BREAK FAIL Exclusive by Thomas Godfrey TWO immigrants — one of them a child — were hiding in the luggage compartment of a coach full of schoolkids when it pulled into this motorway services. Underneath a coach returning from a school trip to France to get across the English Channel – after a surge in stowaway journeys. 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The students, from a small secondary school in Cambridgeshire, were taken inside the halt and told the coach had suffered an engine failure. It took an hour for the kids to be allowed back on the coach so the journey home could resume. A parent of one of the children on board said: 'The pupils were really tired because they had been up at 3am, and they were meant to get home at 10pm. 'Because of the hold-up to arrest the migrants, they didn't get back until well after 11pm. 'It's a total shock because they could have been any two people. Thankfully they did not try to do anything, but I feel uneasy knowing they were close to my child.' An Essex Police spokeswoman confirmed: 'We were alerted to concerns for the welfare of two people discovered under a bus on the M11 near Stansted on Friday evening. 'Officers were called out to a rest stop shortly before 10pm. 'One person has been taken into police custody, while one is being referred to social care.' It comes after we revealed 13 migrants targeted a lorry delivering supplies to a Sainsbury's distribution centre last week. Figures show there were 5,874 detections of illegal immigrants at ports on the continent, including Calais, Dunkirk and the Channel Tunnel in Coquelles. It is a rise of 22 per cent compared with 4,794 in 2023. While migrants crossing the Channel are easily recorded, lorry stowaways may reach the UK undetected. Many go on to obtain illegal cash-in-hand work or claim asylum and be housed in a hotel.
