IN WHAT I can only assume was a final act of revenge on the Telegraph before moving to the Times, Fraser Nelson served up one of the worst pieces written by any journalist anywhere on Planet Earth in 2024. This includes Justine McCarthy and Fintan O’Toole at the Irish Times.
On Boxing Day or St Stephen’s Day, depending on which side of the Irish Sea you are reading this, Nelson gave us this gem: ‘Britain’s integration miracle is a beacon of hope amid instability. Keir Starmer talks doom and gloom, but this is an amazing country – never more so than now.’
If that headline left you dreading what was to come, your instincts were correct.
Nelson informs us: ‘For decades, the British Crime Survey has gauged how many crimes have taken place, reported or not. It shows assault and neighbourhood crime down by 50 per cent over 15 years, bicycle theft down by 60 per cent over 15 years and criminal damage down by 75 per cent. Some crimes (snatch thefts, knife crimes) are rising, but in the context of a stunning overall decline. Our immigrant population has almost doubled while our crime rate has halved.’ (My emphasis.)
I don’t think there is a single person in Britain who believes the streets are safer. Not a single one. Knife crime is indeed on the increase although Fraser Nelson seems to skip over this fact. Also, which would you prefer, a decrease in bicycle theft or an increase in knife crime? Would you prefer criminal damage (a minor offence against property) to decrease but knife crime increase? No, of course not. Most people would like to see knife crime decrease but it has been increasing in Britain.
Much hangs on that term knife crime. It can include anything from murder with a knife, manslaughter to stabbing in the form of either GBH or ABH.
In the year that saw the son of Somali immigrants accused of stabbing to death three schoolgirls in Southport (not the Welsh Christian choirboy the media first went with) I don’t know how anyone could write that Britain has seen an ‘integration miracle’. Sure ‘knife crime’ has increased, just ask the parents of Bebe King, aged six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, who never made it to Christmas 2024 ‘because of integration’ or something.
In fact, on Christmas Day itself two women were stabbed to death. The Times reported: ‘A man has appeared in court charged with two counts of murder after two women died on Christmas Day following a knife attack. Jazwell Brown, 49, of Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, appeared at High Wycombe magistrates’ court on Saturday. Joanne Pearson, 38, and Teohna Grant, 24, died after an altercation at a flat in Bletchley. Both women were from Milton Keynes.’
Somehow, after a year that saw the torture and killing of ten-year-old Sara Sharif at the hands of her Pakistani father, Fraser Nelson was able to type the following: ‘But we seem to have attracted immigrants who, by and large, are prone to integrate and strengthen the social fabric. The secret sauce is our concept of Britishness, which is not about ethnicity or religion but a way of life with global appeal. It’s a set of values that anyone can adopt.’ A set of values that includes a two-tier criminal justice system that is very accommodating to certain groups of criminals. Just ask the girls of Rochdale or the mother of Sara Sharif.
Then we had this: ‘This is not to deny the existence of serious problems, or jihadist nutcases. But the British experience is defined by smaller, less spectacular things that seldom make the news. A reminder came on Christmas Day, when Liverpool FC’s Mohamed Salah, perhaps the best footballer in the Premier League, posted a picture of his family in matching pyjamas under a Christmas tree. He does this every year: to annoy the trolls who fume that, as an observant Muslim and captain of Egypt’s national team, he should not be joining Yuletide festivities. As his picture gently shows, such petty sectarianism is just not the British way.’
So, all is OK in Blighty. There is no issue with Islamic extremism. Proof of this is some millionaire Muslim footballer who likes to put the whole family in Christmas-themed jim-jams. So, those who have an issue with acid attacks, slaughtered schoolgirls, or tortured ten-year-olds are the deluded ones. Not the journalist who writes this kind of stuff.
Nelson continues: ‘To understand the long-term prospects of a country, look at its birth rates. Italy has just recorded its lowest ever . . . Britain is the only major European country not heading for a working-age population decline.’ Now this sentence is another way of cooking the books. Britain has experienced a fertility crash the same as the rest of Europe, concealed only by immigration. Let’s look at Britain’s birth rates. They have been below replacement level for years and 2024 saw births outstrip deaths for the first time in 50 years. Go on though, Fraser, tell me again about the cause for optimism.
The underlying assumption seems to be that we can just import more workers, who somehow stay forever young and never get old themselves. It’s a plan, not a very good one, but a plan.
Nelson then talks about the lack of far-right groups in Britain (someone should inform Starmer of that) and finishes with: ‘This is an amazing country – never more so than now. It may be an act of defiance to say it in this era of Starmer miserabilism, but we really do have more reasons than ever to wish each other a Happy New Year.’
Look, I understand if you have had too much port over Christmas and you are writing your final column for a paper which has done doom and gloom better than any all year. Sure, you want to end on a high, but the truth is that Britain was an amazing country; it was until the governing elites, including Conservative governments, trashed it with out-of-control immigration numbers.
Tory governments also permitted woke beliefs to infect every institution that matters including the police, and oversaw a collapse in law and order and the rise of a two-tier criminal justice system. The tax burden is the highest it has been since the war. Yes, it was a great country, I enjoyed living there for 20 years but some of the above is the reason why I moved the whole family back to Ireland over a year ago. The decline has been hard to watch.
What annoys me about Fraser Nelson’s article is that he is conservative royalty. He is part of the conservative media establishment in the UK. If he doesn’t speak up for the ordinary British man and woman who are not on board with the elite trashing of their country, defeat is inevitable.
Journalists such as Nelson should be speaking up and defending the unique cultural character of Britain. Sure, immigrants can integrate but the scale of immigration in recent years will make this next to impossible and many have utterly failed to integrate.
Media elites in the UK who declare that there is nothing to see here other than some footballer wearing a very fetching pair of pyjamas is not just bad journalism, it is an insult to those who have seen their country given away and have no power to stop it. It is a betrayal.
Badly done by Fraser Nelson, badly done.
