It is a hallmark of the governing adults-in-the-room regimes in most Western democracies to profess wisdom and insight that ordinary people lack. This is, after all, the basis for any claim they have to possess authority. Yet the grim truth of the matter is that these people are, in the main, profoundly callow and naïve. Having only ever for the most part mixed with people who are nice, they think niceness is universal and innate.
Nowhere is this foolish belief more obvious than in respect of policies towards immigration, which are designed and effected in a manner that at times seems almost wilfully purblind to the possibility of nastiness. To refer back to our old friend Milan Kundera, the worldview of those who govern us is above all predicated on the ‘denial of shit’. And when it comes to immigration they deny it by the bucketload.
