You may have heard rumblings in the news recently about plans to ‘curb’ immigration, by changing the rules so as to prevent foreign postgraduate students at U.K. universities from bringing family members to the U.K. with them. This comes off the back of an awful lot of ‘pitch rolling’ for an announcement that net migration to the U.K. has been in the region of 700,000 – 1,000,000 over the past year. Clearly, the Government wants to be seen to be doing something, and to have things under control. And this move might actually help matters (even while deflecting attention away from the fact that it is a problem almost entirely of the Tory party’s own making). Is it to be hoped that we are going to see a rational discussion emerge about the scale of immigration into the U.K.? Not judging by the reaction of the chattering classes, but perhaps among the people who actually count – i.e., the electorate.
First things first: the postgraduate dependant issue may sound like a fringe one, but it is genuinely important. In 2019, the Government changed the rules for foreign students, permitting them to stay in the country for two years (on a Graduate Visa) after their course has finished to look for work – the idea being, of course, that they will then find jobs and stay for longer. No doubt the government thought this was a brilliant wheeze for boosting the economy. And no doubt there was a similar rationale for allowing dependants of postgraduate students to also come to, and stay, in the U.K.: it would encourage more people to study at U.K. universities and hopefully contribute to the economy afterwards.
But – entirely predictably – this new scheme rapidly turned into a gravy train, the true scale of which has been concealed by the fact that universities are very reluctant to talk about it. Basically, U.K. universities are in a tough position financially at the moment. The number of domestic students is flatlining and will gradually decline over time due to falling birth rates. At the same time, inflation is increasing and universities haven’t been allowed to charge more in the way of fees. They are therefore being squeezed. What, then is a university VC to do? The only way to shore up, and hopefully increase, student numbers in these circumstances is to try to get more international students in. (In this way, of course, universities are a kind of microcosm for the U.K. economy as a whole.) Naturally, VCs seized upon these changes to the visa rules as a way to inflate international student numbers – by dreaming up myriad new taught master’s degrees with almost nothing in the way of entry requirements, advertised almost exclusively in overseas markets, and nakedly billed to prospective students as a pathway to employment in the U.K. The message has been simple: “Come to us to study for a two-year MA in International Something or Other, bring your family, and you will get a student visa, which will then allow you to matriculate to a graduate visa, and hence in the fullness of time a working visa, and you and your dependants can all stay in the country for as long as you like. Oh, and by the way, the course will be a piece of the proverbial and you’ll barely have to do any studying at all. PS – Please give us £24k for the privilege.”
The result has been entirely predictable: huge numbers of bullshit postgraduate courses, huge numbers of international postgraduate students who aren’t actually here to study but to look for work, and huge numbers of demoralised staff and domestic students who are forced to deal with the consequences of large influxes of very bad and unmotivated people on university campuses. My university’s library, for example, has been utterly transformed into what I can only describe as a creche – full of the family members of international students, many of them children, simply treating the place as a kind of public square. And what goes on in the classroom is abysmal. When most of these students turn up, they haven’t done a lick of preparation or reading (why would they, when they are fundamentally not here to study, but to get a visa?), and very often spend their time disrupting the session because they have no respect for the university experience and basically don’t give a toss what happens so long as they get that all important graduation and hence graduate status. Meanwhile, the quality of the experience for domestic students goes down the toilet, and the entire educational calling of universities is utterly degraded and debased: we have in a very real sense been reduced to the status of a mere hoop which people have to jump through in order to migrate into the country on a semi-permanent basis.
This isn’t to mention the impact on house prices, public services, wages… the familiar litany. Even in terms of sheer numbers, the consequences have been shocking – according to the Beeb there were nearly 140,000 visas granted to dependants last year, up from around 19,000 in 2020 and around 50,000 in 2021. It is fashionable and trite to use the phrase ‘this is not sustainable’, but, well, this really isn’t sustainable.
But this also makes abolishing the ‘right’ (I hate the use of that word in this context) for dependants of postgraduate students to come to live in the U.K. a relatively ‘easy win’ to get net immigration down by a not inconsiderable amount, if done properly. And the move is therefore to be welcomed, as anyone with an ounce of common sense would realise.
Of course, common sense is in short supply in U.K. academia, and the reaction from that sector has been predictably foolish. The same BBC article as linked to above cites Jo Grady – the utterly incompetent General Secretary of the University and College Union (UCU) – calling the change a “vindictive move” (welcome to left wing politics in 2023, where it is vindictive for a Government to want to have some control over how many people enter the country), and Adam Habib, director of SOAS (by some distance the most easily caricatured loony-left academic institution in the country) bleating that this will create a “financial crisis” for those universities which are “dependent on the fee income of international students”. That becoming dependent on international student fees might not have been such a wise move in the first place is of course lost on him; the Government might reflect that a financial crisis at SOAS and other institutions like it may be precisely what the country needs right now.
But it is rarely worth taking the views of academics seriously. The wider point to be made is that, at long last, we might just be seeing the Conservative Party begin to do what it is supposed to do and respond to electoral forces. Long before the release of these latest figures, people could see for themselves just how widespread and rapid the increase in immigration has been since 2016. It is not racist, nor indeed in any sense illegitimate, to be worried about the effect this is all having on schools, hospitals, housing costs, wages, and so on. And people are actually now starting to talk about it properly where for a long time they were simply forbidden from doing so. The issue – and the fact that it has long been impossible to even discuss it as an issue – has been a running sore in our politics for too long. This move to cut down on international student dependants is a sign that, while it might be a while before the tanker turns completely, the Tory party is beginning to grasp that it has to do something about immigration or lose power for a generation.
Busqueros is a pseudonym.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Labour already being attacked by the pro Palestine wing and losing seats to them.
They are not going to be so easy to push around as Reform.
Interesting times and we are already betting on which group will call a strike before the Summer recess. My money is with the train drivers.
Junior doctors and Port Talbot steel workers.
Come to think of it, are there any steel workers elsewhere in the UK?
Certainly there are in Sheffield, the main factory is opposite our offices.
Although Sunak did manage to spoil the strike chances of the Teachers and College Lecturers!
Aren’t the train drivers still on strike but everyone simply ignores them?
No-one much bothers using the trains anymore.
It’ll be interesting to see Unite attacking Labour for it’s determined destruction of our oil and gas industry.
Well you can say what you like about the Tories, but both Chris Chope and David Davis have kept their seats. Chris Chope was trying to sort out vaccine damage compensation if I remember correctly. And David Davis (no not David Davies) also challenged the vaccine passports and was trying to raise awareness about Vitamin D. There were others on the Tory side who questioned lockdown like Charles Walker (seat lost), but Sir Desmond Swayne has kept his seat. Not too many Lib dems, nor labour, nor greens did much of that.
Esther McVey has also got re-elected. She did quite a nice speech criticising the MHRA and their ties with big pharma. Of course likely to have made no difference.
That’s good news about Sir Desmond Swayne.
Whilst pleased that the Lib Dems aren’t the official opposition, it would have been better if the Tories got only a handful of seats more than them. As things stand, there are inevitably talks on ConservativeHome of ‘how we rebuild’, with the comments section infested with wets that can’t stand Farage. That being said, this piece was fairly on the money.
https://conservativehome.com/2024/07/05/requiem-for-the-lotus-eaters/
Focussing on the positives:
Woke fascists in Scotland got their comeuppance
Penny Mordant is now unemployed and busy setting up an OnlyFans account, no doubt.
Due to delayed voting, fake-rightist Kemi might miss out on the Tory leadership election in which case Suella could become leader.
It would have been if Reform had won, or failing that, the Tories have fewer votes and crucially seats than Reform. But 6 million+ supposed conservatives voted for more of the same Blairism even when they had a clear, viable alternative.
I will repeat my take on the election result, with reference to this article and the focus on Labour. Instead, look at the % of votes. 80%+ of those who voted, voted for some variation of a left wing Big Government party. We’re doomed!
Doomed in the sense that the population will never vote to reform or change anything substantial. Change will never come from within.
What will happen is that the system will collapse. Eventually. When is impossible to predict. The economics won’t hold up forever. Eventually the capability to confiscate wealth and print money to sustain it all will come to an end. And all the madness and contradictions will become unsustainable.
We are a society that has actively chosen to live in self delusion, mesmerised by riches and welfare that we cannot afford. We have allowed ourselves to be convinced that we deserve all these things and are owed them.
It’s all going to end badly. And honestly I can’t wait because I can’t bear the stupidity. It’s become oppressive.
I agree but it will take more than our lifetimes to happen.
I find the hardest part of it all is the loneliness. It’s not much fun living amongst a population for most of whom I have little more than contempt, and some degree of fear (what will the ****ckers do next?). Maybe I’ll join Reform just to make some friends
Not a unique feeling. I’ve never forgotten my Marxist fellow student at medical school who looked a bit down in the mouth. When I asked him why, he said, “I’m the only socialist amongst six hundred fascists.”
Just resist following his therapy of making lists of the categories of people who would be shot come the revolution…
But we DO deserve all these good things, because our Ethnic European = “White” ancestors worked hard to build up the West into great nations, and we did, too, as their descendants.
Collapse will come as planned by the Globalists forcing it upon us, using lawyers & judges & chicanery to thwart any populist revolt against it.
And they will continue to welcome swarms of termites to eat up your house, smiling all the while, telling you that they really love your house, and your “values”, and that you should just lay down and let them eat up your house, because you are “racist” and “guilty of white privilege”.
True, but continuing, ironically, with unsustainable policies, like NET Zero, DEI, High Carb diets, ‘a pill (or jab) for every ill’, and promoting corrupt Arts, Humanities, Social and Climate Science at the expense of STEM subjects and Manufacturing, does hinder receiving our inheritance.
Yes, I agree. I think sums it up;
https://x.com/Earthdriver/status/1809101947523207615
How many voted Tory to keep someone out, rather than voting *for* anything?
I am baffled as to why anyone supposedly conservative would have voted Tory this time given that there was a clear conservative alternative. Monro has explained his reasons for doing so which I think were illogical but he obviously has strong feelings, but I think most of them are asleep.
Penny Mordaunt has that kind of dominatrix look about her that may be in huge demand in certain London gentlemen’s clubs which could, I imagine, be quite financially rewarding.
Not unrelated topic — TCW the invention of Islamophobia 2
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-invention-of-islamophobia-part-2/
Thanks for the link.
Could be interesting if the new prime minister wants us back in the EU, even if by stealth. Isn’t much of EU becoming right wing?
Depends on the definition of Right Wing.
We don’t want Mussolini style fascism.
Agree. Maybe the term is now meaningless.
“Right wing” just means “Conservative” in the dictionary….wanting to preserve the traditions, heritage, culture and ethnic identity of the indigenous inhabitants.
It does not mean, nor ever has meant, “fascist”.
Just like with the BUF, Mussonili wasn’t antisemitic. Both later became antisemitic, the tatter because of pressure from Hitler during the latter part of WW2.
It turns out that you are right.
“MUSSOLINI’S JEWISH LOVER WHO CRAFTED ITALIAN FASCISM”
“Margherita Sarfatti wasn’t just the dictator’s most erudite paramour; she was his secret adviser and ideologue.”
https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/2014-11-23/ty-article/mussolinis-lover-who-crafted-fascism/0000017f-ef00-d0f7-a9ff-efc51f0b0000
“THE JEWISH MOTHER OF FASCISM”
“Margherita Sarfatti was known in Italy as Benito Mussolini’s mistress, but she was much more than that. She was his ideological companion, planned the ‘March on Rome’ with him, wrote articles in his name, edited the Fascist Party organ and wrote his first official biography.”
https://www.haaretz.com/2006-07-06/ty-article/the-jewish-mother-of-fascism/0000017f-ebd9-d639-af7f-ebdfe9040000
“MUSSOLINI’S JEWISH LOVER WHO HELPED LAUNCH FASCISM”
“The aristocratic, intellectual and ambitious wife of wealthy Zionist lawyer Cesare Sarfatti, and mother of their three children, did not only share her bed with Il Duce. She also helped him forge and implement the fascist idea; she contributed advice — and Sullivan says, money — to help organize the 1922 March on Rome in which Mussolini seized power.
During those 20 years she was his eminence grise and unofficial ambassador, glorifying him in her 1925 biography that was translated into 18 languages.”
https://forward.com/life/209758/mussolini-s-jewish-lover-who-helped-launch-fasci/
Someone said if the EU moves anymore to the Right Nigel Farage will want to join back up.
The EU continues to be an Authoritarian Big State, and the people are starting to rebel because they yearn for Small State, market driven, patriotism.
And the result would be that Europe would become a collection of independent, sovereign states that trade with each other.
Yes! No “European Union” of any kind is necessary.
Just “Sovereign states that trade with each other”, as they did for centuries.
Now that the US Federal government has proven again and again that they are essentially hostile to the interests of the American people, each individual state in the USA should declare themselves to be independent nations trading with each other, greatly facilitated by their common language and culture. The US Federal government no longer serves any useful purpose.
Since the Globalists want to abolish all borders, nations, and ethnic identities, everyone in the world should do the opposite: more and more independent nations, WITHOUT any Supreme Court Kritocracy telling them what to do.
Surely this political strategist number is money for old rope.
Labour vote share in England stays the same.
The Conservative vote share plummets.
A brand new party with old Conservative policies and a charismatic leader takes all those votes the Conservatives lost.
So all the Conservatives have to do is to embrace the old Conservative policies and the charismatic leader and they are back; home and hosed…..
Keep It Simple, Stupid
KISS and make up……..
40.1% of the registered voters couldn’t be bothered about the outcome. That’s quite a bit more than backed Labour. This number does not include those who fail to register to vote. Meh. They didn’t even have to turn up – just ask for a postal vote.
Starmer’s words about treating ever person in the country with respect rang a lttle (very) hollow with the hecklers at Farage’s speech.
The real story. Thank God they managed to hoodwink a large % of the masses by bringing Farage into the game. Without him a voter turnout of less then half may have been on the cards – something that would have been impossible to ignore, and the first domino would wobble. An excellent move to make the unimportant think they’re still important. Well played.
You give them too much credit.
You sound like a nasty leftie
Nasty leftie? Bless you. Made me smile. Proof, as if it were needed, that there is no bottom to the idiocy barrel.
That’s rich coming from a person who wanted to be ‘fair’ to Harriet ‘The Harridan’ Harperson, a supporter of PIE because she ‘didn’t want to rock the boat’ of the MMM.org (MinoritiesMatterMore.org) aka the leftard civil liberties brigade.
Proving her craven urge to keep in with the Leftie in-crowd even in old age, she jumped off the old-hat Feminist bandwagon onto the very trendy Transophilia Girls’R’Us bandwagon full of ugly men in daft dresses sporting 5 o’clock shadows.
To hell with XX chromosomers, their rights will just have to give way to a REAL minority of XY ‘women’ – much smaller than 50% of the population!
Doubtless, a percentage of those ugly, badly-dressed men are paedos disguised as grandmas, so Harriet might get another great opportunity in ECHR to support a deserving minority, courtesy of Smarmer. Deserving of what, I won’t say.
FL, you’re right, there’s no bottom to the idiocy barrel as shown in the results of this General Election promoting a White-Brit-hating marxist rabble to power in majority White (for now) Britain.
Hmm, isn’t Rayner the one who wants to welcome in loads of immigrants across the country ( just so the ‘cultural enrichment’ can be fairly doled out so there’ll be no squabbles amongst the citizens ) but there’s not enough houses so she wants to build hundreds of thousands but we all know that’s not going to happen? Think that’s her… What Labour will do is what the NL and Germany have done: just create ‘container villages’. They’re slightly less unsightly than ‘tent cities’ but still look weird;
”Sir Keir Starmer has made Rachel Reeves Britain’s first female chancellor as he appoints his new cabinet to get on with the job quickly.
One of his easiest appointments for the new prime minister was Ms Reeves as his new chancellor.
She played a major role in the campaign and as a former Bank of England economist has helped bring economic credibility back to Labour from the wreckage of the Jeremy Corbyn years.
She is the first female to hold the second most important role in governent in 708 years of the office being in existance.
Earlier Angela Rayner has been handed her own department as secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities taking over from Michael Gove.
Ms Rayner, who will also be deputy prime minister, only the second woman to hold the role after Therese Coffey in Liz Truss’ 49-day government, will mirror the role of John Prescott who was Tony Blair’s deputy and also in charge of the department for local government and development.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-cabinet-keir-starmer-who-general-election-b2574493.html
Same office as Prescott, who knocked down 250,000 much-loved houses in Yorkshire and promised 500,000. The first 250,000 would go to those who were displaced. How many were built? Zero.
All Rayner knows about housing is how to get away with fraud and pocket £48,000 of taxpayer’s cash.
Thanks for the shocking information about Prescott!
I did not know that.
Prescott also went through Oldham’s 100 + years old terraced stock like a dose of salts. All those houses, thousands of them could have been renovated for £20 k or less. I know, my first house was a two up two down, self renovated.
Replacements – zilch.
I would say that with a mandate at the level of twenty percent it would be impossible to govern. And that is before they’ve even started to cock things up even more. He will be gone soon, his replacement worse, their replacement even worse and so on. There are limits to systems management. Like Frank Zappa said. the illusion of freedom will continue as long as it is profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.
Good quote that.
Standing as an independent after being ousted from the Conservative Party, the courageous man of principle Andrew Bridgen also lost his seat – by a huge margin. We don’t deserve such men.
I wish Reform would welcome him into the fold, because together we are stronger than separated.
He has been chosen as the wartime leader for an escalation in offensive starting in August. It is thought that his voice will be more commanding when it comes to conscription. I strongly doubt it. There is something quite odious in boomers telling young people to fight their wars so that they can keep their wealth. I think the younguns have cottoned on to this.
You seem to have an odd name.
You are forgetting that the “Boomers” you so despise are the ones who protested against all the stupid foreign wars in the Middle East, and before that in Southeast Asia, and now in Ukraine, once they discovered how they had been deceived by Blair & Co., Zelensky & his secret friend Putin, and now China sabre-rattling for the Globalists.
This site is turning into the Daily Mail. Lots of strange fake names and nasty comments.
I like most of the comments on the Daily Mail articles, which reflect what the ordinary man-in-the-street thinks. And the Daily Mail doesn’t allow commenters to post interminable screeds on totally irrelevant topics beneath every article, or one person making at least 10 comments on every article, all day every day.
Jabby on here seems to be one of the 77th Brigade, just trying to wind everybody up.
Trust me in four weeks time you will all be gung-ho for war and Keir Starmer and conscription and all that comes with it. They know that you will feel that way in a few weeks time and they take advantage of it. Can you blame them. Just wait and see how pro-war you are in 4 weeks time. If you were to be approached or accosted in that moment you would be a raging mess saying ‘kill them all’. If you don’t believe me then just wait four weeks. They mess with you because you are easily messed with. Normal people leave easily messed with people alone but predators don’t.
Hello, 77th Brigade! Back again, are you?
I wish you were on the side of the angels.
Perhaps one day, you will be…
I’m not shedding blood for these Globalists, a civil war is another matter because democracy is dead and has been for a while.
Amidst the appalling queue of Kneeler’s Communist Chosen, traipsing toward their new ministerial offices, waving their hammers & sickles, there is one bright little ray of sunshine:
The Five Musketeers making history, “All for one, and one for all!”
Nigel Farage for Essex, Clacton-on-Sea
Richard Tice for Lincolnshire, Boston & Skegness
Lee Anderson for Nottinghamshire, Ashfield
Rupert Lowe for Norfolk, Great Yarmouth
James McMurdock for Essex, South Basildon & East Thurrock
As Nigel gleefully said to the youngest one, “Go on, my son!”
If only he had the stones to talk to tommy Robinson, I know Parliament would make hay out of it though, but he needs to unite the Right. Not the Tory Right they’re already dead.
Yes, I agree completely, because together we are stronger than the Globalists. He should gather all the patriots into the fold: all those Reform candidates who were forced to stand down, Tommy Robinson, Andrew Bridgen, Nick Griffin, Lawrence Fox, the English Defence League, the Football Lads Alliance, and stop acting like a Witchfinder General, hunting down anyone who ever opposed the Mass Invasion of the West by the Third World, or ever expressed any kind of loyalty to their own Ethnic European people, or ever wanted their own country back.
As someone said,
“I always stand for white folks first, because no one else will.”
I think by October the situation will be dark farce. W are used to winning every war under the sun because our weapons are generations above the opposition. You are making a mistake to think that it will just be more of this. I wish it would be but it isn’t. On every level we are defeated even on the level of tactical nuclear weapons. I hate to admit it but there comes a point when you have to admit the truth.
A good general doesn’t win every battle he fights, but he does fight every battle he can win.
The saddest news of the day was Andrew Bridgen losing his seat. One of the very, very few reputable, and completely honest, MP’s I’ve ever come across.
Seconded