Latest news with #MiddleEngland
Telegraph
28-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The secrecy on migrant crime statistics must end
There is nothing more emblematic of Broken Britain than our porous borders. If an island nation can't secure its borders, what can it do for God's sake? Middle England is in revolt at the persistent failure to stop the boats (yes, under multiple governments – as I would be the first to admit). They have been made to endure the costs of illegal migration for far too long and their patience snapped long ago. When I've been in quiet towns this past week, I've heard their worries about asylum hotels. It's the talk at the school gates, at the hairdresser's, in the pub. 'I know you're a father, Mr Jenrick,' a woman said to me, walking her dog beside the harbour in Fareham. 'Would you want an asylum hotel on your street?' I don't want my young daughters to share a neighbourhood with men who broke into this country illegally, about whom we know next to nothing. And I don't want anyone else's family to have it forced upon them either. First and foremost, because they have no right to be here, having entered in flagrant breach of our laws. But it's not just that. They impose economic costs on cash-strapped councils, diverting resources away from Brits in need. They totally change the character of areas. And there's another, darker reason, one that few will confront: small boats are fuelling crime and making everyone less safe. The press reports only seem to get worse: drug dealers, rapists, murderers and even terror suspects are arriving on small boats. If you're unlucky enough to have an asylum hotel in your area, you are almost certain to have been impacted by the petty crime that accompanies them. Somehow it's still a taboo for the Government to admit it publicly. The furthest the Home Office has gone to acknowledge the problem is issuing guidance to migrants in hotels explaining what sexual abuse is and that it's illegal. But sensible countries do not bury their heads in the sand. When I visited the notorious Eagle Pass checkpoint on the US-Mexican border in 2023, America's border force openly displayed the data on the criminal pasts of those they intercepted. In that small section of the border 113 convicted sex offenders had been intercepted that year; across the whole of the southern border they had stopped 15,267 convicted criminals in total. The lesson is that when the unfiltered truth about illegal migration is out there, the authorities have no choice but to respond. This issue propelled Trump to the Presidency with a mandate to end the disorder. Just as in America, the border crisis here is a national security emergency. But instead of trusting the public with the truth, this Labour Government has force-fed the public the lie that the majority of people arriving are women and children. Fact check: 75 per cent have been adult men. In our topsy-turvy world, the British public are asked to deny reality. The facts about crime are covered up because of a toxic combination of bureaucratic inertia and weak leaders who pussyfoot around the truth. It's flat out wrong. I tabled an amendment to lift the veil of secrecy over migrant crime under the last Government and I have just done so again under Keir Starmer. I won't stop until the Ministry of Justice publishes the background of criminals by their nationality, country of birth, visa status, asylum status and their method of entry to the UK. Our membership of outdated international treaties like the ECHR will look trivial when it's clear the safety of our communities – of our children and loved ones – is at stake. We have enough problems with law and order already without making it worse. When the British state finally acknowledges that, they might just be shamed into stopping the boats.
Telegraph
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Migrant hotels are radicalising Middle England
Sunday saw another night of protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping. Essex police were eager to clamp down on the subsequent demonstrations, arresting a total of six people and describing the atmosphere as 'angry and violent'. Locals had for years expressed frustration at the area being used to house asylum seekers, a feeling which overflowed last week. This is not the first time protesters have clashed with police over the Government's decision to place those who cross the Channel in hotels. But the events of the past week should suggest to us that these disturbances will become more common. Epping is not like the largely Northern, post-industrial towns which protested last summer after the Southport attack. It is a leafy area, where you need a middle-class income to afford a mortgage. One of the videos from Thursday's protest showed the difference. A mother who looked like she would be more at home on the school run in an SUV than with a megaphone gave a rousing speech, saying that they were there to protect their children. That is because the trigger for the protests was an alleged sexual assault on a 14-year-old girl by a recently arrived Ethiopian asylum seeker, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, staying at the asylum hotel. The failure of this Government and the last to stop the small boats crossings is radicalising Middle England. Every week brings more young men from some of the poorest and most violent societies on earth. Some will successfully claim asylum because they claim to come from places to which they cannot be deported. They are often kept in hotels, at a cost of billions to the tax payer. Although the Government brags that hotel numbers are on the way down, asylum seekers are also being put in flats and HMOs across the country. Increasingly there is nowhere you can go where you won't find asylum seekers barracked nearby, with all the risks that come with that. Most recently, Eritrean Aron Hadash was convicted of assaulting a 19-year-old with learning difficulties, which make her 'very childlike'. That did not matter to Hadash, who was living at taxpayer expense in a nearby Holiday Inn. Intoxicated, he pinned her down, grabbed her breasts, and touched her crotch for several minutes before she escaped. Despite showing no remorse and the judge saying that he poses a 'high risk of serious harm to the public', he was sentenced to only 14 months and has already been released after serving a year on remand. That is why ordinary people came out onto the streets of Epping. Although there have been reports of members of the far-Right attending, the hand-made signs and mixed nature of the crowd suggests that it is largely locals. Tommy Robinson may have said he will join the protests this coming weekend, but that shows that he too was caught out. Most of the professional protestors were from counter-protestors from Stand up to Racism, who arrived from out of town with their professionally printed placards, only to be run out again by furious locals. That should actually worry the authorities more. A handful of troublemakers is one thing, a community up in arms is another. There is a logic to such community backlash. Last month, in Ballymena, the horrific rape of a local girl, allegedly by Roma teenagers, led to riots over several days that targeted Roma and other foreigners. In the aftermath, many of the Roma have left or been moved to new accommodation. Many locals are said to be pleased, claiming that anti-social behaviour has subsequently reduced. This shift in attitudes can also be seen in the increasingly fractious relationship between the police and the public. Images of a police van smashing into a protestor without stopping on Thursday shocked many. The sight of the police evacuating Stand up to Racism protestors in vans was also controversial, even if it was probably a sensible tactical decision to get them away. The revelation last week of a secret, multi-billion pound programme to smuggle Afghans into Britain while muzzling the press has only further reduced trust. People find it hard to believe in the rule of law when our borders go unguarded, while prosperous market towns have riot police on the streets. Restoring trust requires action. Our broken human rights laws are at the root of the small boat crisis, which is why Suella Braverman and I co-wrote a paper published this week which shows how Britain can leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Once we have regained control of our borders, we can begin closing the asylum hotels and HMOs. Those granted asylum over the last few years should have their cases reexamined, to see if they are genuine or if they were only beneficiaries of our overly-generous laws. This will help make our country safer for women and girls, bringing peace back to our streets.
Telegraph
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Hallow Road: Rosamund Pike faces every parent's worst nightmare in this absurd thriller
Mobile phones have a well-known power to ruin films, if someone's texting or (worse) scrolling in your field of vision. On screen, they can be even more of a menace. Exhibit A is Hallow Road, a suspense thriller that essentially relays all its tension by speaker-phone. Eighty minutes ought to be a tight frame for this sort of hokum, which takes no effort to watch, but the only thing that escalates is how silly it is. Two Middle England parents, not given names but embodied with pained intensity by Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, have just had a furious row with their pregnant daughter, who has stormed out and driven off into the night. Somewhere in the woods, about a 45-minute drive away, she has knocked down a pedestrian, while possibly high on drugs, and calls them up hysterically to sort things out. Pike happens to be a paramedic, who tries to talk her through CPR, while Rhys drives them both as quickly as possible to the scene. They assume emergency services will beat them there, but it could well be that their daughter – a snivelling problem child we never see, but hear panicking plenty – is telling porkies on that front. There's some thematic ambition to the piece: writer-director Babak Anvari (Under the Shadow; Wounds; I Came By) is evidently thinking about parental responsibility, and the point where protective instincts might snap under duress. Pike and Rhys take it as seriously as they can, but the camera is given to interludes of just wafting over their anxious faces, and there's nothing they can do about a big daft crunch in the sound mix when CPR goes wrong and the victim's ribs cave in. Much is left to the imagination here – Anvari may be aiming for the slippery logic of a Grimm's fable. At the same time, his overeager screenplay spells out too much. What should be the sore aftermath to a familial bust-up has the telltale ring of a recap. The writing is several drafts away from being jagged or suggestive the way Anvari's terrific Under the Shadow was – it's stuck being blunt and obvious. As for the twist, it's too risible to be disturbing. The mystery vocal performances flaunted in the end credits give it a campy Twilight Zone quality that sends you out bemused. In cinemas now
Telegraph
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
I was wrong before. Only net zero immigration can now save Britain
For thirty years, at every election, Labour and the Conservatives pledged to reduce immigration, and then did the opposite. Far from feeling any contrition, let alone apologising, many of these politicians, convinced of their superior morality and grasp of economics, seemed proud to defy a 'bigoted' electorate. This was the foundational lie at the heart of modern politics, an unforgivable breach of trust. More so even than economic failure and creeping anomie, it is the ultimate source of the anger and anti-establishment resentment engulfing Middle England. This deception went hand in hand with an anti-democratic drive to gaslight ordinary voters, to cast doubt on their memory, to downplay the scale of what was happening and trivialise its consequences, to deny that promises were being broken. History was rewritten, social tensions covered up, a fake economic narrative constructed, inconvenient truths memory holed and dissidents demonised or cancelled. Tony Blair promised 'firm control over immigration' before throwing the borders open. David Cameron said he would cut net migration to 'tens of thousands a year', a promise he broke every single year. A furious electorate voted for Brexit, and what did the Conservative Party do? Terrified to take on the Blob, out of ideas to grow an economy crippled by socialism and lockdowns, the Tories doubled-down. The UK always had a migrant component to its long story, but it was never really a country of immigrants, until now. In the 25 years to 1997, total net migration into Britain was 68,000. In the 25 years to 2022, it was close to 6 million; in 2023, it hit 866,000 (and gross arrivals are much larger). This is orders of magnitude greater than anything experienced in the 19th or 20th centuries, and total recent immigration, as a share of the population, is far greater than the Roman, Viking or Norman settlements. Like in every other European country, voters are losing patience with this madness, and are turning to political disruptors, in our case Nigel Farage. In response, Sir Keir Starmer, a lifelong pro-migration activist, would love us to believe that he has suddenly discovered the virtues of civic nationalism. Britain is becoming an 'island of strangers ', he says, and has unveiled a series of reforms to cut arrivals. 'Settlement in the UK is a privilege that is earned, not a right', he tweeted, a great sentiment that is incompatible with his love of human rights law. Few will trust Starmer, and his 'solutions' are tweaks when only a revolution will suffice. Every orthodoxy of the past 30 years must be rejected. We were told that largescale immigration was necessary to boost productivity, and yet its rate of growth has diminished; we were assured it would save the NHS, and yet it is in crisis; we were told we needed workers, and yet, of the 956,000 visas issued in the year to December 2024, only 210,000 went to main applicants in all work categories. Some of these were doctors, investment bankers or PhD scientists, but most were not. Economists are finally acknowledging that many immigrants, even some who work, will end up a net drain on the public finances. Relatively high earners are net contributors; low wage migrants are not, especially if they have dependents. The NHS surcharge isn't enough. Migration cannot save unfunded state pension systems either: to rely on migrants that also age is akin to believing in Ponzi schemes. By the standards of virtually all of British history, I'm a liberal on immigration. I support a multi-faith, multi-racial, colour-blind society, united by a love of Britain, its democratic institutions, its values and its traditions. My family's story is born out of immigration. I'm very comfortable in today's pluralistic Britain of hyphenated identities. Millions of migrants make a massive contribution. But no mature society can cope with the scale of inflows we have experienced, and the woke, self-loathing ideology that dominates in Whitehall has led to the deliberate fragmentation of our country. We are heading towards disaster, and everything that is great about our country, including our remarkable tolerance and our success at integrating previous waves of arrivals, is now at risk. I worry about the threat of Islamism, and the rise of anti-Semitism, about the loss of social cohesion and the increase in intra-minority tensions. I worry about the emergence of openly sectarian politicians, and about the idiocy of policies that discriminate against white people, that tell the young that Britain's history is shameful or pit one group against another. I worry about our failed colonial-style model of policing, which seeks to keep the peace between different groups rather than treating everybody as individuals. I worry about the insanity of trapping millions of UK-born adults on out of work benefits, and recruiting foreigners to work instead. I now realise only drastic solutions will do. We need a five-year moratorium on net migration – in other words, zero net migration until 2030, before returning to 1990s volumes. Given annual departures – 450,000 in 2023 – this would still at first allow a large number of arrivals, diminishing rapidly over the next few years, allowing the economy to adapt. This would allow the country to take stock, trust to be rebuilt and our creaking infrastructure and housing to catch up. Becoming British ought to become a lot more like joining a club: race or religion must not matter, but the applicant should need to show commitment, demonstrate how he or she will contribute, and explicitly pledge support to our democratic institutions and rule of law. Those who can't or won't make the commitment should either be given temporary visas or rejected. Citizenship ceremonies and the current vacuous 'British values' are insufficient. We should welcome a generous number of refugees, but should choose who we let in to bar criminals or those who dislike our values. This would require quitting the European Convention of Human Rights and several other international treaties, and being willing to treat anybody who arrives illegally like ordinary criminals.
Daily Mail
10-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
How to profit from the rush to protect firms from M&S-style cyber attacks
Words such as 'cyber attack', 'malware' and 'automated phishing' used to sound futuristic. But once a threat stops us from buying Percy Pig sweets and comfy underwear, we know it has struck at the very heart of Middle England – and it is time for investors to sit up and take notice. At the time of writing, M&S still isn't offering online shopping after a huge cyber hack, while the Co-op is struggling with stock issues and a customer-data breach. The hackers have cost these companies dear – Deutsche Bank puts the cost to M&S at £15 million a week – and experts warn many more companies are vulnerable to similar attacks. 'Cyber threats are growing in size and severity,' warns Mike Seidenberg, portfolio manager at Allianz Technology Trust, who says there were more than six billion malware attacks globally in 2023. 'Bad actors have increased their ambition, with critical infrastructure, government departments and crucial industries permanently at risk.' For investors, cyber warfare represents both an opportunity and a threat. On the one hand, poorly prepared companies undergoing a cyber attack will hit their shareholders squarely in the pocket, with M&S stocks down more than 6 per cent in the past week. However, investing in companies in the cyber security sector could allow you to benefit from a trend, with Cabinet minister Pat McFadden stating this week that the Government would 'turbo charge' the cyber security sector. 'Cyber security is not a luxury but an absolute necessity,' he says. If investment in the sector continues, investors may feel the same. Protect your wealth from hackers As the fall in M&S shares last week has shown, hackers can seriously damage your wealth. A report from security experts Cisco suggests that only 4 per cent of businesses have reached what they call a 'mature' stage of readiness where they can withstand a cyber attack, with 70 per cent of companies either in the 'formative' or the 'beginner' stages of readiness. This suggests that many household names are as vulnerable as M&S and the Co-op. However, Laith Khalaf, head of investment analyst at investment group AJ Bell, says it is difficult to predict where hackers may strike next, which makes it extremely difficult to protect your portfolio. 'Even companies which provide cyber security have found themselves the victims of attacks, such as CrowdStrike and FireEye,' he says. 'Probably the best and simplest tonic is to hold a diversified portfolio so that if a company sees its share price fall because of a cyber attack, it doesn't damage your wealth too badly.' Khalaf adds that the share-price reaction to cyber attacks tends to be short-lived. Many companies have strong cyber security insurance policies, so if you buy firms where you believe the management makes good decisions about risk, chances are they will be protecting themselves. However, it is always an area you could ask about at an annual general meeting if you are concerned or check the firm's risk factors' section of its annual report. Searching for cyber security opportunities With governments and businesses spending more on cyber security, many experts believe now is the time to invest in those securing us all against the hackers. 'Investment capital is pouring into cyber security businesses alongside aerospace and defence firms,' says Jason Hollands, managing director at investment platform BestInvest. The Cisco study also showed that more than nine in ten companies increased their budget for cyber security in the past two years. Many of the biggest players in cyber security are either unlisted or listed in the US, but there are various ways you can invest. Good options for individual stocks For those who prefer to pick individual shares and are untroubled by the volatility that entails, there are some good options. Tiny SysGroup, based in Manchester, is backed by Ken Wotton, manager of Baronsmead Venture Capital Trusts, who says that the business is 'well positioned for sustained growth'. SysGroup supports small and medium-sized businesses with their cyber security. 'It assists in building robust cyber security systems spanning not only the core business but also its supply chains – a critical yet often overlooked area of vulnerability for many groups,' Wotton says. SysGroup shares have been volatile – down 26 per cent in the past six months, up 10 per cent in the past month. At the other end of the scale in the UK, defence giant BAE has a cyber security division – although, as Khalaf at AJ Bell points out, it comprises less than 10 per cent of the business. Lee Wild, head of equity strategy at Interactive Investor, says cybersecurity firm NCC stands out as one of the remaining UK players not to have gone private. It is down 25 per cent this year, but there's always the possibility that it will attract a suitor with a hefty premium at this level. Funds and trusts that back cyber specialists There are also trusts and funds that allow you to take a mixed slice of the cyber security market. Darius McDermott, managing director at FundCalibre, likes the HANetf Future of Defence ETF. This is 43 per cent invested in technology firms, most of which are cyber security specialists. It launched in 2023, at just the right time for cyber security, and has seen its shares rise 46 per cent. Other specialist ETFs in this area include the Legal & General Cyber Security ETF and iShares Digital Security ETF. James Carthew, head of investment companies at QuotedData, recommends Polar Capital Technology, which invests in leading players such as CyberArk Software, Crowdstrike Holdings and Cloudflare. Polar Capital has had a torrid three months – down nearly 17 per cent following President Trump's tariff announcements, but has recovered somewhat in the last month.
