migration
Will the government stand up to mob rule?
A very big week is in store for the government’s strategy to tackle illegal immigration with all eyes on the…
What's wrong with the Rwanda plan?
There are many unanswered questions about the government’s new policy of compelled expulsion to Rwanda of uninvited asylum claimants. Here…
Will Britain welcome Ukrainian refugees?
Immigration used to be the most-discussed issue in British politics. It gets less attention these days, for reasons too varied…
What’s to become of Africa’s teeming youth?
Demographers are attached to their theories. The field’s most enduring is the ‘demographic transition’, whereby modernisation inexorably lowers a society’s…
The conflict at the heart of the migrant question
A friend, a Cambridge professor, passing my old college last week, was startled to encounter a young lady standing outside…
What happens to Afghan migrants when they reach the UK?
What happens to Afghan migrants when they reach the UK?
Priti Patel and the progressive language police
There was an exchange in the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon that ought to be a scandal but won’t.…
Is Boris brave enough to solve the Channel migrant crisis?
The sheer number of useless interventions that have been touted as offering a solution to the cross-Channel migrants crisis is…
Putin's plan for Ukraine
Vladimir Putin’s message was as clear — and familiar — as his method. The Kremlin has begun another major build-up of troops…
France is using migrants just like Belarus
It was hard not to laugh, coldly, at the statement from western members of the UN Security Council that condemned…
Why did neo-Nazis patrol the German border?
Just after midnight last Sunday, around 50 vigilantes gathered in east Germany to ‘patrol’ the country’s border with Poland. They…
The powerlessness of Priti Patel
It is hard not to feel sorry for Priti Patel. She would surely have been a Tory conference darling at the…
Boris and Priti can't blame France for the Channel migrant crisis
The sun is beating down again, the waves are less choppy in the English Channel and the small boats full…
Talk tough and do nothing: The abject failure of Patel's migrant strategy
It is somehow fitting that during an Olympic Games a department of Her Majesty’s government is busy smashing records. In…
Lukashenko’s migrant warfare against the EU
When you have already forced a plane down with spurious claims of a bomb threat, just to arrest one dissident…
A hymn to the hummingbird — one of the most astonishing organisms on Earth
Along with coral reefs and their fish, tropical butterflies and birds of paradise, hummingbirds must be among the most beautiful…
Migrant smuggling is one of Lebanon’s last businesses
Ibrahim Lachine sold his mother’s furniture to pay for a place on a smuggler’s boat from Lebanon to Cyprus and…
The way Greece has conducted itself in this pandemic is an example to us all
Aristophanes was a comic genius long before the Marx Brothers, but he also gave good advice to the Athenians: stop…
Britain’s misguided approach to asylum is threatening lives
The news this week could easily have led with the deaths of 14 Afghan and Iraqi migrants in the English…
A cartoonish look at migration: Europe at the Donmar reviewed
Europe. Big word. Big theme. It was used by David Greig as the title of his 1994 play about frontiers…
Why flee France?
Pitching your tent for weeks on end in the cold and mud, with no power or plumbing. Running in a…
Iran’s boat people — and why they’re coming to Britain
When the migrant crisis started, about three years ago, it was seen as a mainly Syrian affair. Caught in the…
The swallows that herald spring
Sweet lovers, Shakespeare reminds us, love the spring. How can they not? All that wonderfully wanton colour, all that sensual…
The new age of the refugee
After years of estrangement in a foreign land, what can immigrants expect to find on their return home? The remembered…
300 signatures can be wrong. How about 2 million?
Name check 306 business people signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph saying that Britain would be better off outside…
