No successful democracy can function without a social contract between the people and the government. Citizens pay their taxes and obey the law in the expectation that the state will protect the country, provide essential services and care for the vulnerable.

But unprecedented levels of immigration are destroying the social contract in Britain. As our rulers shamefully lose sight of their obligations to the public, our basic rights and national identity are being crushed beneath the wheels of the demographic revolution’s juggernaut. Only this week, it was revealed that a third of all babies born here in 2023 were to foreign mothers, while in London the figure reached an astonishing 67%.

Our once stable land is now gripped by the perverse economics of the madhouse and the twisted morality of a corruption racket. At the very moment when winter fuel allowances are about to be axed for most pensioners, our benefits system dishes out payments to millions of newcomers who have made no financial contribution to British society. Only a political culture that has completely lost its way would promote the systematic import of idleness and welfare dependency, but that is exactly what is happening in today’s Britain, where people from overseas are incentivised to settle here.

Ideological supporters of mass immigration like to claim that most of the new arrivals come here to work, doing the tough jobs that Britons won’t, but that is just a myth. In fact, according to the Government’s own statistics, only a third of migrants to Britain arrive for this purpose – with study, family reunion, asylum applications and benefit claims making up the majority of cases.

Indeed, the truth about the drain on the public finances has been exposed by the Reform MP for Great Yarmouth Rupert Lowe, whose diligent research has just unearthed some incredible figures about migrants’ reliance on social security. He calculates that out of the 1,218,000 new arrivals who settled here in 2022/23, no fewer than 499,500 of them – 41% – were allowed to sign on for universal credit. Lowe further asserts that, based on his findings, “over 50,000 foreign nationals are passing tests to become eligible to access and receive universal credit every month”.

As he rightly puts it, “this is a scandal” and “the British public deserve to know the truth”. But inverted priorities can be found throughout the public realm. This week, a huge controversy blew up in the Cheshire town of Altrincham, where a popular local hotel suddenly cancelled all bookings because it is to be used to accommodate 300 asylum seekers.

What made this row all the more incendiary were disputed allegations that, in addition to such support, migrants are to be given free private healthcare.

Altrincham is just one example of the deepening fractures in our society caused by this unsustainable upheaval, which is undermining solidarity through the perception that certain groups are favoured by officialdom. That worrying trend is evident in the shortages of affordable housing and the strain on public provision because of soaring demand.

In London, 48% of all social housing is now occupied by households headed by migrants and in some communities the reliance on the taxpayer is far higher. It is estimated that in the capital, 74% of Somalis live in subsidised properties. Yet even in the face of the state’s generosity, homelessness continues to rise, with the charity Praxis claiming that one in three rough sleepers in London are migrants.

“We cannot talk about tackling homelessness without talking about the immigration system,” says Praxis. That logic should be applied elsewhere: to crime, where foreign nationals account for more than 10,000 prisoners; to security, where MI5 has 39,000 Islamists on its terror watchlist; or to the fiscal burden of illegal immigration, which at a conservative estimate amounts to over £14.4billion-a-year. There is nothing compassionate about this laxity. On the contrary, it represents a systematic betrayal of the British people who have to pay for it.

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Sadness at the news of Timothy West’s death is mixed with admiration for his magnificent career as an actor. Of the many roles he played on stage and screen, one of my favourites was his performance in a 1986 television drama as the Northern Irish doctor Dr John Bodkin Adams, who in real-life was suspected of killing scores of his wealthy female clients at his Eastbourne practice in the 1950s.

West captured both his unctuous air of menace and his refined Belfast accent in this memorable play, which centred on Adams’ sensational trial in 1957 for the murder of one patient. Most of the press and the public thought he was guilty, but one reporter took a very different line. Percy Hoskins, the renowned crime correspondent of the Daily Express, then Britain’s best-selling paper, proclaimed his certain belief in Adams’ innocence from the start of the trial at the Old Bailey, much to the annoyance of the paper’s maverick proprietor Lord Beaverbrook.

Just after Adams had been found not guilty, Hoskins received a call from the press lord. Beaverbrook barked down the line: “Percy, two men were acquitted today: Adams and Hoskins.”

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The fightback against the woke destruction of free speech has received a huge boost in America with the election of Donald Trump. But here in Britain the prevalence of Orwellian groupthink continues. In a shocking development this week, the columnist and bestselling novelist Allison Pearson received a visit on Remembrance Sunday morning from two police officers, who questioned her about a tweet she had posted a year earlier that had been described as offensive by another social media user.

Yet Ms Pearson – a doughty campaigner for Brexit and real conservatism – was given no details about the message (which they told her had since been deleted) nor her accuser, so she cannot effectively defend herself. The whole episode stinks. It is like something out of communist East Germany in the 1970s rather than a free democracy.

The local constabulary’s duty is to investigate real crimes, not act as a political censor.

The timing of the police’s visit, on the very morning that the nation honours the heroes who died to uphold our liberties, only adds to the grim irony of the saga. Britain used to fight authoritarianism. Now our rulers seem only too keen to embrace it.

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At the COP29 green summit in Azerbaijan, Ed Miliband and his band of eco-zealots keep boasting of Britain’s moral leadership of the world on climate change. But his attempt to cloak his reckless environmental agenda in the language of national pride is absurd.

Who wants to lead the world in jacking up energy prices for the sake of dogma, in abandoning valuable reserves of oil and gas, in worsening dependence on foreign suppliers, in undermining economic competitiveness, in worsening the risk of blackouts and in failing to build a new generation of nuclear plants?

That’s not patriotism. That’s self-sabotage on an epic scale.

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Not content with greater job security, shorter hours, longer holidays, better pensions and more flexible working than most private employees enjoy, Whitehall civil servants are now demanding a four day-working-week.

Encouraged by the Labour Government, which could be described as the political wing of the public sector, this practice is now increasingly common in local government and other parts of the state machine. But the change brings to mind the quip of Sir Horace Cutler, the Tory leader of the Greater London Council in the 1970s, when he was asked how many people worked for the authority. “About half of them,” was his laconic reply.