How can it possibly be that we have no idea as to how many people live in the United Kingdom?
The figures always used to be predicated on the number of births recorded minus the number of death certificates issued and for many years the numbers fluctuated around the six million mark.
Estimates released in January 2025 assume that the population will increase to 72 million in very short order and this has huge significance for the very basic structures of our society and the future of what we know as community.
Births and deaths are roughly equal so we are set fair to avoid the nightmare of countries such as Japan where fewer and fewer live births are being recorded while the pensioner percentage of the population thrives and grows.
If less and less people are working and paying taxes then a burgeoning constituency of the elderly will soon find that there is no one paying the taxes needed to finance their pensions.
While we may be dodging the bullet here in the UK there is an uncomfortable reality that too few people seem courageous enough to address.
The increase in population is very largely fuelled by immigration and if in the admittedly highly unlikely case that for the first time in two thousand years of our island history there were no significant immigration to these shores then our population would indeed be declining – though not as precipitously as in Russia or Japan.
We’ve been an immigration nation since the Ice Age and when people talk about their pride in being Anglo Saxon they conveniently forget that the Saxon part of the sentence means what is now Germany.
Leaving that aside for the moment we have to ask ourselves why we cannot come up with an accurate figure of those living in these islands.
‘Great news for immigrants!’ MPs slam Starmer over Labour’s immigration planPAThe national census every ten years gives us a wealth of information – including the bizarre fact that Jedi Knights are one of the fastest growing religious groups in the country – but it only records those who can be found.
It is a criminal offence to fail to complete a census form and a nice little earner for local authority staff on annual leave or in retirement is to go round knocking on doors where no form has been submitted.
Now I don’t want to upset the Cambridgeshire Constabulary who have banned expressions such as “black market” and “black list” but it is an undeniable fact that there are huge numbers of people living and working below the radar in what we once innocently called the black economy.
By the most generous estimate we detect less than fifty percent of those whose entry to the UK is via an “agent” with access to shipping containers, hollowed out footwells or repurposed lorries.
Under current law they can keep their heads down for an average of ten years and then apply for something called the “regulation of overstayers”. If they have set up home then their right to family life is the golden ticket to a UK passport.
It is in no-one’s interests to have significant numbers of undocumented men and women and the security implications are as scary as the social impact can be devastating.
LATEST MEMBERSHIP OPINION:
Kemi Badenoch has vowed to remove unemployed or low-paid migrants from BritainPAHere are two suggestions to end this madness.
Firstly; get a grip on all aspects of immigration and process people as quickly and as effectively as the Dutch.
If someone has a right to be in this country then even if they float in on an overloaded rigid inflatable boat then let’s get them documented and let them work and start paying taxes to the state.
If they have no right then it’s back from whence they came in short order.
Secondly; why are we the only European country that does not have identity cards? The lads on the car wash would swiftly be back on the boat if they were required to produce an ID card with photo ID and fingerprints when claiming benefits, education, health services and housing.
We all carry identity cards in our purses and wallets. Driving licences, library cards, loyalty cards, season tickets – you name it and it’ll be in someone’s purse or wallet.
To survive as a nation, we need to know how many people are in that nation. Proper immigration controls and identity cards may now be a total panacea but they would be a damn good starting point.