Richard Michael Blaber<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/11/labour-immigration-small-boat-crossings-reform-uk" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theguardian.com/commentisfree/</span><span class="invisible">2025/aug/11/labour-immigration-small-boat-crossings-reform-uk</span></a>. "Immigration has been a fixture of Britain’s <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/political" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>political</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/discourse" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>discourse</span></a> for so long, it now feels, like Voltaire’s god, that if the issue did not exist, we would have to invent it. What would our <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/politics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>politics</span></a> look like, what would the broad majority of Britain’s <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/media" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>media</span></a> do with themselves, without <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/immigration" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>immigration</span></a>? It has become such a feature of the country’s political <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a>, it amounts to a sort of <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/historical" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>historical</span></a> exhibit... [conjoined by] <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/misinformation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>misinformation</span></a>."</p>