If you’ve spent any amount of time reading or watching the news over recent months you would be forgiven for believing that we are living through an unprecedented migration crisis, with our borders under “invasion” by malevolent foreign hordes.
So pervasive has the coverage of the so-called “small boats crisis” become that it’s easy to miss the fact that net migration actually halved over the past year, with the UK receiving significantly fewer asylum applications than most other European nations.
Indeed as migration levels have fallen, the amount of time devoted to the subject by news organisations and politicians has soared, with both the Labour Government and Conservative Party desperately ramping up the rhetoric in a failing attempt to win back votes from Nigel Farage and Reform.
Yet for all the words spoken about "small boats” in the English Channel it’s striking how rarely we have heard from the actual people arriving on those vessels, let alone the stories that led them to take such a perilous journey.
Earlier this evening I spoke to the former Home Office official, turned award-winning investigative journalist, Nicola Kelly about her brilliant new book ‘Anywhere But Here’.
This book, which I would highly recommend readers checking out for themselves, pulls off the rare feat in the current era of actually bothering to look at how this country treats the many vulnerable people seeking refuge on our shores.
This story, which is as far from the tabloid caricature of scrounging foreigners living it up in luxury hotels as it is possible to imagine, should shame all of those politicians and journalists spending their time whipping up fears about small boats, rather than actually engaging with the issue of why people have been forced to take these journeys.
You can listen to the full interview above, which includes discussion of the Government’s increasing anti-migrant rhetoric, the impossibility of Farage’s migration promises and Nicola’s own feelings of guilt about her previous life as as a Home Office spokesperson promoting the department’s ‘hostile environment’ policies.
This is the first of a series of interviews I will be conducting over the coming months with journalists, experts and politicians, focusing on the state of the UK and our politics and media.
I will try to keep these all free to watch, but if you can support this newsletter with a paid subscription that would be hugely appreciated.
