I am kicking myself for not running an online gambling book on how long it would take to find a scapegoat for banking crisis. But then, less than a week would have seemed too short a time, so, as the bookmaker, I might have actually lost out on this one.

As T-W said yesterday, the UK immigration minister has stepped up to meet our government’s desire to get re-elected at any cost, by announcing a “clampdown” on immigration. This lurch towards shamelessness has been predictably attacked by the Tories – whose natural constituency is the HYS nutter and the Daily Mail reader – as not being tough enough (garbage) and stealing their policies (true)

Mr Grieve [the Tory equivalent to the immigration minister] said Labour were matching Tory policies on setting immigration limits. (from the BBC)

I have a picture of someone who finds that they have lost their housekeys and believes that beating the crap out of their next door neighbour will magically get them inside their own front door.

I.e Does not compute. This sort of thing bears about as much relation to reality as something dreamed up in an alcoholic stupor by someone who has had their frontal lobe removed.

In any case, (apart from the use of “immigrant” as if it means “black person”) the “immigration” that gets little England so irate is immigration from Eastern Europe, over which the UK government can have no control, under EC rules. So the only immigration that they can control involves a tiny number of people from the commonwealth countries and people seeking asylum.

The treatment of asylum-seekers is already a scandal. Is it possible that the government plans to make it even worse, so that people impoverished by the financial collapse will feel they’ve got their money’s worth?

Does anyone seriously believe that they are about to lose their job or their home because of “immigrants”, rather than because of the economic meltdown? Such people are clearly too stupid to walk and chew gum at the same time. How on earth do they manage to survive anyway?

As I write this, the unpleasant immigration minister is on the Politics Show saying that stronger immigration controls will lessen racism, indeed that it is the ethnic minority population that’s calling for it…..

Back to my conceptual online betting scheme. What are the odds that the minister would claim that tougher immigration controls would actually counter racism? (less than evens) What are the odds that this is true? Basically zero.