There are three articles in The Guardian this week that give the game away. Firstly a typically dishonest Daniel Trilling piece with the title “Draconian border security doesn’t work and costs lives. Why is Britain pushing it?”. Poland obviously didn’t get the memo. He says “Our politicians say they want to stop smuggling. What they mean is they want to stop migration”.

Then we have Nesrine Malik who posits that “nobody wins their place in the UK; for most people it is the result of luck and circumstance, and they have no more right to ownership of it than the people risking their lives to get here.” (very possibly the most neoliberal assertion ever made in The Guardian.

This is then sealed with a piece by Polly Toynbee, who has it that “There is no ‘solution’ to Channel crossings – there is only a humane response. We must let asylum seekers work and live legally, while striving internationally to resolve the causes of displacement”.

This is all against a backdrop campaign repeating the mantra that we need more “safe and legal routes”. They’re pulling out all the stops on this one. The message is clear. Border control isn’t worth the hassle, anyone who wants to come should be allowed, and the natives are mere economic grazing units with no ties to their home and should make room for more economic grazing units. Your nation, your heritage is meaningless.

In Toynbee’s case, the subtext is probably more self-serving. It translates to “We need a new slave class now these beastly brexiteers have stolen our nannies and hospital porters”. This “right to work” shtick is a cypher for an amnesty for illegal immigrants. “Safe and legal routes” means abandoning any immigration criteria.

They won’t actually come out and say it, but the Guardian is urging surrender. It would have us passively resign ourselves to permanent mass immigration, and those born here, whose ancestry is rooted in these islands, have no claim to it. It’s an open borders agenda masquerading as refugee advocacy and humanitarianism.

Depressingly, it may be the case that they’ve already won. The game is to prevent deportation of any kind, which isn’t difficult being that the Home Office doesn’t really bother, and eventually, it will be unworkable to have millions of irregular migrants working in the black economy. They’re not going to get serious about shutting down the black economy so they will simply legalise it.

This is only going to polarise politics. I’m not a nativist, I think ethno-nationalism is grubby, and though I am at the far right of the centre right I am not anti-immigration. I just think it must be managed and fair. We can absorb incomers, there is a humanitarian obligation to offer sanctuary to refugees (within reason) and if the system operates with public consent, there’s no real problem.

This aggressive open borders agenda, however, is enough to push anyone over to the dark side. They’ve made it an all or nothing ultimatum, and they’re not remotely interested in a thing like public consent. If they put their agenda to a referendum they would lose it hands down. This is why they instead employ propaganda agencies masquerading as refugee advocacy charities. Emotional blackmail is their modus operadi. They have weaponised the Dover invasion, and the game is to demoralise and smear, to wear down our defences, to obstruct any reform, to prevent deportation, and to gaslight the public. It starts with turning our institutions against us. 

The genius of this campaign is to wipe out the centre ground and recruit the unwitting to the cause by dressing it up as a matter of compassion. They go for the weak spots. The moderate view, that we simply cannot accept all comers and extend to them the full array of rights and benefits of citizenship, is framed as callousness motivated by xenophobia. We are demonised. The weak of mind who wish to be seen as progressive and compassionate will submit to this narrative, framing anyone who disagrees as “far right”.

This is partly why I’ve re-joined UKIP. This sustained attack on the very idea of borders and nationality, if left unchecked, is an existential threat. A nation without borders and common cause is no longer a nation. This is an existential issue that even outranks the Net Zero issue. Since they goal is eliminate the middle ground, with no compromise in mind, this becomes a fight to the death.

This is also why I chose UKIP over Reform. Reform doesn’t want to get its hands dirty or get into arguments where the left could brand it “far right”. Thus it is not prepared to take on the most pressing fight of our times. It mattered to be less UKIPpy for the purposes of the Brexit referendum, but now it’s time to pick a side. Neither the Tories not the Labour party realise what the game is, though the virtue signalling “compassion” of the establishment parties makes them useful idiots for the open borders extremists. This is a debate with need to put front and centre and have it all out in the open. There can be no skirting around it. To tread lightly is to play the game by the left’s rules.

Over the last year or so, UKIP’s candidate for Southend, Steve Laws, has covered the Dover invasion almost on a daily basis, exploring every detail of the issue out on the front lines. He has exposed the shroud of secrecy around the mechanised taxi service operating in the Channel. The left have gone out to smear him as far right. 

Though he holds some views which are far less compromising than my own, he ultimately sees the unfairness of this widespread abuse of the asylum system, and the staggering lack of response by this notionally Conservative government. Consequently, I am able to put my differences aside. UKIP’s past is in the past. It is now the only vehicle through which to fight this battle. And it must be fought. Since there is no middle ground, this is the hill I will die on. 

The establishment parties are squeamish about taking on the left. The Tories are afraid of their own shadow, ever fearful of being branded the “nasty party” once again (for doing what the majority wants). Even though the left use migrants as a political weapon, have done nothing to address the virulent antisemitsim in their own ranks, and push toxic ideologies such as critical race theory and gender voodoo, the Tories can’t find the backbone to stand up to them. And if it comes to the crunch, Richard Tice will do a deal with them, selling out the entire right – just as Boris Johnson did.

I have no problem with doing our bit to provide safety and sanctuary for the oppressed. It’s in the British DNA. I have no problem funding refugee camps and even committing our forces to provide security for them if needs be. Even vehement opponents of our foreign aid statutory spending target admit there is a humanitarian compulsion. We can even resettle the most vulnerable in manageable numbers. But that’s not the deal on the table. We’re being bullied and coerced into accepting anyone who rocks up with the means to pay a smuggler and passively acquiesce to the home office rubber stamping asylum claims no matter how spurious.

This offends my sense of British fairness to the core. It is an anti-democratic agenda waged by the same people who fought with all their might to overturn the 2016 referendum; the same people who hold Britain and its people in contempt. They are my enemy. 

Britain is painted as a delinquent for its “hostile environment” but it’s France bulldozing transit camps in Calais, not even offering basic provisions, shunting them toward the sea. If anyone is “forcing” migrants into the hands of smugglers then it’s the French government who allow organised crime to operate with impunity in their own territories. Say what you like about the conduct of the Johnson administration but France is playing with the lives of migrants.

Consequently, every dinghy that arrives undermines the case that our asylum system is humanitarian in nature. It’s merely a symptom of French antipathy towards the UK, whose conduct is not far removed from that of Belarus, while the left are all too happy to exploit it for their devious ends. I will not submit to this. The line must be drawn here.