Last week on Question Time, Nigel Farage claimed that uncontrolled immigration has made Britain overcrowded. He added: “I think ordinary folk, going about their lives, are feeling it.”
His diagnosis demonstrates the narrowness of Ukip’s philosophy. A tribal, islander state of mind, unable and unwilling to grasp the globalised world that Britain and its empire pioneered. A sort of soft, cosy nationalism that denies being racist but sweats and fidgets at the sound of foreign languages on the train or ignores the cries of migrants stranded in the Mediterranean.
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