As time passes, Tony Blair’s status as one of Britain’s most destructive prime ministers looks ever more more secure. The Daily Telegraph reports on the latest details of the Great Charlatan’s record to emerge:
Britain experienced the largest influx since the Saxons during the 13 years of the last Government with migrants arriving in the UK at a rate of almost one a minute. Enough foreign nationals to fill Birmingham three times over moved to the UK in a policy that critics have dubbed “Labour’s great betrayal”. Up to another million are feared to be here illegally, while a million Britons left the country during the years of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The true legacy of the last Government is exposed today in a comprehensive review by the think-tank Migrationwatch. It has meant pressure on public services, roads, housing, schools and hospitals…The study comes as an independent poll revealed three in four Britons believe immigration is a “big problem” with concerns especially growing among younger people who are facing record levels of unemployment.
Official figures on Thursday are expected to show up to 5.5 million non-UK born people arrived in the country as long term migrants between 1997 and 2010 – the equivalent of almost one every minute. Around 2.3 million left over the same period meaning the UK population increased by around 3.2 million as a direct result of foreign migrants. Some 80 per cent of those also came from outside the EU, dispelling the myth that the country’s ability to control inflows was restricted by the right to free movement of member states. Most migrants came from the Indian Sub-Continent, Africa and the Middle East.
The Migrationwatch study, Immigration – Labour’s enduring legacy to Britain, said the scale of the movement is the largest seen in the UK since the waves of Saxons more than 1,000 years ago. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: “In the years to come immigration will be seen as Labour’s great betrayal. “The sheer scale of what has occurred is changing Britain fundamentally and irrevocably and in ways the majority of the population did not ask for, were not consulted about and did not wish to see.”
. . . In 2009 Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett, claimed that the sharp increase in migrants over the last 10 years was partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”.
Blair’s immigration policy was disastrous, deceitful,and based on a profound contempt for democracy. In short, it was a classic Blair trifecta . . .