Public sentiment on immigration is leaving politicians behind

This evening I've been out in Leeds at a New Culture Forum meeting featuring William Clouston, leader of the SDP, as guest speaker. Not for the first time, I was impressed by Clouston. He spoke on one of his regular themes of "elite indifference".

All too often we see that the establishment can accomplish things if it suits their agenda and if the political will exists, but it never extends to anything you are I would regard as a priority because they simply do not care. Their own political fads and narcissistic agendas come first.

Clouston is a compelling speaker, who is more informed, and more convincing (by a country mile) than other party leaders I might mention. He is a real asset to politics.

In his speech he noted how immigrants very often bring their own cultures and, as such, assimilation, if it happens at all, is glacial. It is less likely, however, when rates of immigration surpass the host nation's absorptive capacity. There was little to disagree with. In respect of that, SDP policy is to drastically curb immigration.

This, though, is not enough in my view. All of the parties on our side of the argument say they want to get get immigration back under control, but that only gets you so far. In a week when we've seen foreign-speaking mobs of armed Islamists out on the streets, hunting for white people to assault, we have an arguably bigger problem than our porous borders.

I put it to Clouston that I'm very far from alone in thinking SDP policy on immigration and assimilation is simply too weak. If it wasn't so before this weekend, it certainly is now. I am of the view that when we have entrenched Islamism and growing sectarianism there is no fixing this without large scale removals. We need policy not only to address Islamism, but also the garbage immigration we have from Africa and the Arab world, which can only contribute to the violence, crime and disorder.

Alas, Clouston does not believe mass removals will ever be a component of SDP policy, so that's where I get off the bus. This is now at a level of seriousness where we cannot rule out the possibility of low grade civil war where every city resembles 1980's Belfast. And with that goes terminal economic decline.

The question for Clouston, then, is that if deportation isn't the right answer, what is? The SDP's future credibility rests on how good the answer to that question is. How do you integrate immigrant communities who have no interest in becoming British and show contempt for British customs, culture and traditions?

As is usual for these events, though, discussions with others in the room proved just as productive. The general sense was that we have reached a turning point, and that we cannot flinch from debate about more robust measures to tackle problem immigration, and problem immigrant communities. It is now an existential matter.

Personally I'm a little squeamish about ethno-nationalism because it very often travels alongside white supremacy and crackpot theories about genetic purity and Jewish influence. But at the same time, milquetoast Faragist civic nationalism is in cloud cuckoo land. We need an ethnocentric version of civic nationalism that recognises, without racial prejudice, Britain must remain a homeland for ethnic Britons. The survival of immigrants who have assimilated depends on our survival. When primitive third world tribalism starts to assert itself, so does the savagery that accompanies it. Events in Bangladesh this week should be instructive.

It seems that this is all just a little bit out of scope for the SDP, which is as keen to maintain civil society respectability as Richard Tice. The SDP perhaps has its uses to gently coax normies over to our side of the argument, but the Overton window must travel further to the right on immigration.

This week has been a wake up call for many, and though the politicians insist there is no justification for the rioting, I've spoken with plenty of ordinary people who think there most certainly is.

Just this week, the government declared its intention to buy up properties to house migrants. We have seen how well that pans out in Ireland where buildings have been daubed with threatening graffiti and even set on fire (see main picture). It's easy to condemn but if I were living in the near vicinity and had a teenage daughter, and the government declared its intention to place feral fighting-age third world men on my street, I would think very differently. I don't think I would resort to arson, but I don't think I would be in a rush to inform on someone if they did.

That is not to condone what amounts to low-level terrorism, but Labour must be remarkably stupid if they think this policy will not have grave consequences and further exacerbate ill-feeling towards migrants. Given the intensity of feeling on this, all of the political parties are misreading the mood. Even Farage's lightweight interventions barely touch the sides.

What's clear is that we are going to need a raft of targeted policies that recognise the seriousness of the situation, and for politicians to realise just how dangerous it could get if we continue to kick the can down the road.