But I don't agree with the other point you seem to be making (and forgive me if I've misread you) which is that we just need to deal with and reduce immigration, and that will solve the problem and the Farrages and Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennons of the world will disappear. That's not going to happen, because it's not possible to reduce immigration as low as Farage and co say they want (and I think Farage knows this very well) and for our country to still function normally. It wouldn't work now, and going forward with our declining birth rates and more climate migration needing to happen it's only going to be less and less viable and more complex, and saying we need to simply "deal with immigration and border issues" isn't really an honest place to start the discussion you want to have either in my opinion. Because we do need to discuss it, and we do need to recognise the problems with the system we have like the exploitation, and communities not being provided the support and infrastructure to deal with the changes. And at the time also deal with root causes of society's inequities (I think we both agree neolib capitalism is to blame). It's the kind of thing Corybyn understood and expressed perfectly. ultimately we are going to have to win the argument in favour of immigration.
It's not an easy thing to do, but I really don't think there's really any other alternative unless we want more of these sorts of riots.
I think we have a fair bit of common ground here. I agree that reducing immigration to the levels that Farage and company would like, is not feasible in a modern economy. However, the cause of Farage and Tommy Robinson/Yaxley-Lennon popularity is a result of our system being abused and nothing being done to improve or resolve it. You will always have Farage types in society, but their popularity is always linked to how well a government are handling certain issues.
I agree that immigration is a multi-faceted issue. Right now, we need immigration to prop up our economy and certain industries. Again, I agree, that declining birth rates are a problem (which is why immigration is so high at the moment) and the government needs to be making it easier for families to have children because otherwise we are just kicking the can down the road; all the migrants that settle here will one day be old too and their pensions will also have to be paid for by the working population.
I'm no politician but in my view, a smart government would begin by encouraging British citizens to have more children - get Britain f*cking again, so to speak. Then, you can start creating job opportunities and make it easier for people to train in key areas of our economy (e.g., lifting the cap on doctor and dental training places, for example).
You are right, places are having to accommodate new people that simply do not have the resources for that at the moment.
I think the argument of immigration has already been won. No reasonable person would argue for 0 immigration, the argument is about the levels of immigration we have into Britain moving forward. It goes back to my previous comment - the conservatives won multiple elections on the grounds that they would lower immigration and they failed to make any progress in that regard; it consistently went up over the fourteen years they were in power. Even Labour had a huge thing about "smashing the gangs" and lowering migration during their campaign this year.
At some point, if that's what the people are voting for, then the government has to begin the steps to making that a reality. Otherwise, you are going to end up with large numbers of people frustrated at the government over many years, which will only boil over at some stage; which we are seeing now.
