It was a no-go area. Politicians who touched on the subject were immediately slapped down as bigots, racists and Little Englanders.
They were made to feel ugly of mind and spirit for even thinking about limiting the numbers coming here.
Fast forward a decade and it doesn’t feel like much has changed. Only it has.
In two years, net migration has hit an eye watering 1.3million.
And predictions for the future are that more than ONE MILLION people a year will come to the UK.
And that’s not counting the ones coming illegally. How in God’s name is that sustainable?
Of course it isn’t.
The pressure on vital services, housing, the NHS, schools and the economy is wrecking a country that’s already buckling under a brutal cost-of-living crisis.
Yet still the Left in this country don’t see it as a problem.
They see the people who are worried by it as the problem – as racists who hate “foreigners”.
And if you thought 30,000 or 40,000 illegals coming here on small boats was devastating, wrap your head around ONE MILLION-plus legal migrants every year – because that’s what’s happening.
Many of us voted for Brexit to control our borders and yet those borders have been flung wide open to all comers under this Tory government.
In Farage they see someone who gets their concerns and isn’t afraid to voice them. And every time the elites sneer at him – millions more move into his camp. And they’re not racists.
They’re disillusioned, politically homeless people who feel they’ve been ignored and abandoned.
Look at the usually anodyne, Lorraine Kelly, this week insulted Farage (who’s in the jungle) because the cameras showed his bare bum cheeks while he was getting a shower.
She made spiteful, ageist comments about his face and said she was “traumatised” by the sight of his bum.
Really? She wouldn’t have dared body shame the overweight Nella Rose in the way she did Farage.
If Ms Nasty had got naked, she’d have called her “brave” and celebrated her body positivity.
Celebrity Lefties like Lorraine don’t get the fact that Farage is more in touch with great swathes of this country than they will ever be. And being as contemptuously hostile as she was only feeds his appeal.
But if Sunak has any hope of winning the next election he needs to immediately put a five-year stop on ALL immigration, the only exceptions being for NHS workers and highly skilled people we desperately need.
If he did this it would at least show the British people their Government is listening to them.
