One of the most frustrating narratives by people who seem reasonable and not necessarily on the side of protestors here is some idea that you can't talk about immigration. It's a nonsense, I'm 38 and all anyone my entire adult life is done is talk about immigration. It has dominated every general election since I could vote (Michael Howard "are you thinking what we are thinking" were one of the main billboards in my first ever voting GE), it has dominated Brexit and beyond, it has been at the forefront of public life since the second world war. We talk of nothing else.
Immigration is high now because the Tories have changed how they've calculated numbers, illegal immigration is worse because Brexit has fucked us. Even Corbyn's Labour didn't stand on a platform of open borders, no one has. Ultimately the "honest" conversation about immigration never actually is "honest": if you don't want every social service in the country to collapse, if you want your pension to be paid, if you want food on your shelves, if you want universities to be funded, these are the numbers that we currently need, give or take a couple of thousand, to sustain them. The price we pay for that is a richer and diverse culture, a better English football team, racists being upset that they have to see their kids going to school with Asian kids, and like any population a tiny minority being criminals. That's the honest conversation.
Would it be nice if we could create the conditions where perhaps our social security system didn't collapse if our economy didn't grow constantly, would it be nice if people born here lived in conditions where they could start families younger than they currently do, maybe. All up for debate, but no one ever votes for those policies: they vote for house prices rising, pensions staying strong, and a strong consumer culture.
