This is a story from London—actually from the March 14th Daily Mail, but it will sound all too familiar to American listeners

As you’ll know if you follow VDARE.com, Britain is in the fourth year of a huge surge in illegal aliens crossing the English Channel from France. The British media, in an excess of politeness, still refer to the crossers as "asylum seekers," although since France is a perfectly safe country the term has never made any sense.

The so-called Conservative Party, which has controlled Parliament for twelve years, has done nothing to stop illegal immigration. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister until last September, displayed no interest whatsoever in the issue even as the numbers of incoming illegals surged into the tens of thousands.

Rishi Sunak, who replaced Johnson as Prime Minister, seems to want to take some action on the issue. It’s not hard to figure out why.

By law there has to be a general election for a new Parliament before January 2025, less than two years from now. Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is not polling well. The latest surveys show a thumping great majority for the opposition Labour Party.

This is a bit paradoxical. There’s widespread public desire for action on illegal aliens—among Conservative voters it’s the Number Two issue, right behind the cost of living. The Labour Party is run by anti-white metropolitan progressives: nobody thinks they will do anything to stop the flood.

So if Brits want action on the illegals and nobody thinks they’ll get it from Labour, why is Labour polling so well? Rishi Sunak obviously thinks the answer is: Because, on the basis of twelve years experience with the Conservatives, nobody thinks they will act, either, so the immigration issue’s a wash. Voters have just given up on it and want Labour in to do some repair work on the economy and the welfare state.

Resolute action by the Conservative government might change their minds, so that’s the direction Sunak is trying to go in.

He put a bill before the House of Commons this week that will, if it becomes law, make some key changes. For example: Anyone arriving in Britain by crossing the Channel in a small boat—or any other unauthorized means—would no longer be able to claim asylum in the U.K. They’d be shipped to some third country like Rwanda and put under a lifetime ban on re-entry to the U.K.

The bill also eliminates some of the possibilities for indefinite litigation and re-litigation on ”human rights” grounds that lobbies for the illegals use to prevent deportation indefinitely.

So it’s good stuff. The House of Commons approved the bill at its second reading Monday night [Rishi Sunak’s new Channel migrants law clears first Commons hurdle… but trouble looms for PM as ex-ministers—including Theresa May - warn tough rules on asylum seekers must be watered down, Daily Mail, March 14, 2023].

However, Sunak didn’t get the full support of his party. Just as here, the British political class lives at a distance from ordinary people and doesn’t much like them. Conservative Party politicians in general are more liberal than their voters, just as our Republican congresscritters are more liberal than their voters.

No one in Sunak’s party actually voted against the bill; but several abstained in the vote and some spoke against it in the House. One of them was Theresa May, the Prime Minister before Boris Johnson.

⁦@theresa_may⁩ has been behind all rebellions and is a pro EU fifth columnist. She ballsed up immigration when she was in charge and tries to water down anything that gives us a leg up. She is #toxic https://t.co/YDBaGAFZLv

— Seraphus (@Seraphus4) March 14, 2023

The bill was unkind to people escaping slavery, said Mrs. May. In point of fact the biggest single component of the channel boat people is Albanian gangsters, but I guess no one told her that.

Mrs. May also said, quote: ”Whenever you close a route, the migrants and the people smugglers find another way." End quote. That’s the transatlantic equivalent of those Republicans who tell us that building a ten-foot wall on our border with Mexico is no use because illegals will bring twelve-foot ladders with them.

So yes, the Brits have their Lisa Murkowskis, Mitch McConnells, and Lindsey Grahams, too. It’s a worldwide plague, or at least an Anglospherewide one.