Britain has benefited enormously from immigration from the Jews to the Indians and the Chinese
First, let’s get the inevitable cliché out of the way: some of my best friends are Jewish. One of my longest and dearest is, and my first girlfriend was, (as a born-against Ulster Prod I followed my rebellious father by ensuring my second was a Catholic). So it is a given that I hate all hate, all sectarianism and especially antisemitism.
The stabbings in Golders Green are appalling, the work of a mentally-ill loner who, it is said, earlier that morning had tried to kill a Muslim friend.
Few come out of this well: not the government which has promised all sorts of action to ban Palestine Action marches without yet delivering; the mass murderer Binyamin Netanyahu for giving legitimacy to those marches, and not the politicians who jump on any bandwagon, specifically the ridiculous boob-hypnotist pseudonym Zack Polanski, himself Jewish.
There are just 300,000 Jews in the UK, half of one per cent of the population. The overwhelming majority is peaceful, hard-working and successful. And non-violent; when did you last hear of a Jew stabbing a Muslim (almost four million population, almost all of whom have enhanced our communities with their labour, the mum and dad corner shops open all hours, and the restaurants that have changed Britain for the better in the last 70 years).
Just as the Jewish community seems to be brilliant at maths and money, many Muslims are clever techs and medics. This was brought home to me last week when I spent the afternoon at Moorfields, the eye hospital in London’s Old Street.
I thought I was there in to have my cataract done when in fact I was booked for all the prelim work; four different tests which reveal everything not just about the cataract which has made me almost blind in my right eye but every aspect of my sight (or lack of it).
Each medic doing the tests was charming, explained exactly what it was for and what it would reveal and did so with great patience. Two of the four women were Muslim, identifiable by their headscarves, and probably also one of the men who introduced himself as Mohamed. The other was a delightfully informative east European who I feared would ask me questions at the end to make sure I had been paying attention.
My consultant had both an Oxford degree and an impeccable matching accent and was of Indian heritage. He encouraged me to eat the ants with the sushi at the uber-pricey Beaverbrook Hotel (“utterly delicious”).
You might gather from this that I believe this country has benefited enormously from immigration. From the Jews of Europe and Russia long before Hitler’s Final Solution who became the mainstay of entertainment, science, banking, and the diamond and fashion trades, to the Indians and Pakistanis who manned the mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the Chinese and other East Asians who enhance our lives. These days their children and grandchildren are the high achievers.
The big problem of course is the unfettered illegal immigration that is costing the country so much and is the wind behind Reform’s sails. I certainly have no easy solution and neither does Farage or Badenoch. Our problem is that we are a rich, successful and attractive country (whatever Farage may say) and most of the rest of the world is not, Ergo. But it is the problem that will do for Starmer along with all his other failings listed here last time.
But first he must reassure the tiny Jewish community (which includes his wife) that antisemitism will be stamped out before there are any more atrocities. Sadly that must begin by banning the marches for Palestine stirring up hatred. The hatred whose existence grew from the massacre of 1,800 Jews and the subsequent genocide of 70,000 Gazans by Trump whisperer Netanyahu.
Now there is a Jew worth hating.
*****
I may be a lukewarm monarchist but what joy it was to watch Charles sock it to Agent Orange in a way that everyone but the thick, deranged, vain fool in the White House understood. The Democrats stood as one, so too did some of the braver Republicans. JD Vance understood, looked embarrassed throughout and was rooted to the spot.
It was a speech that had to be seen because it bore all the trademark pauses-for-effect, the cufflink twitches and the eyebrow raises of the kingly delivery. Trump called it “fantastic…I was very jealous” because he doesn’t do subtle but mostly because he is just too dumb.
So who wrote it? The praise is being heaped upon Sir Clive Alderton, Charles’ private secretary, and Tobyn Andreae (fotp and Daily Mail) but I suspect the main input came from the King himself. He can be mischievous and likes a joke. References to the Royal Navy, “my prime minister”, Nato and executive responsibility…checks and balances were not there by chance and would never have appeared in a speech by his mother.
It wasn’t quite Peter Cook’s 1979 masterpiece lampooning the judge’s summing-up in the Thorpe trial (“now go away and consider your not guilty verdict”) but the satire was there.
Well done Charles, award yourself another medal and gold sash!
*****
All in all, it was a jolly week. Lunch with fellow Boulevardiers Watkins and Bingo (but sadly not Dismore, Manners or Pilton, as the editor reports). Cheeky Girl Hermione seemed to know a lot about the celebration without ever attending despite frequent invitations, even mentioning blouge wine.
And guess what, we drank a bottle of rosé, ordered (though only partly paid for) by her very close friend Watkins. I’m not one to gossip but…
Two days later we had lunch with ever brilliant Liz Gill at the Reform which meant on the warmest day of the year I had to wear the nearest thing I still have to lightweight summer suit and tie. She told me I looked very high commissioner which I rather liked. The conversation turned inevitably to her husband Danny McGrory who died suddenly in 2007 a day after returning from a fortnight in Pakistan, researching a story for The Times. I had seen him for lunch just a week before he left for Islamabad.
His death at 54, just two years after Ross Benson’s at 56, seemed equally cruel and shocking. Both died at the pinnacle of their trade and are still remembered as the very best of their generation.
Two days later we went to the final performance of In the Print, the play which recounts the Wapping strike through the eyes of Murdoch and Brenda Dean, general secretary of SOGAT. It has been well reviewed and was packed for the last show, all of us of a certain vintage and creaking on the uncomfortably hard seats of the King’s Head theatre, Islington.
The caricature of Kelvin MacK was way off but Andrew Neil was portrayed as vain and pompous which was spot on (though I used to enjoy his answer machine message on his Kensington landline: “Please leave your message after the high moral tone”.
Best gag of the play: “Give the Labour Party's new communications director a call, Peter seems a reliable type".
*****
After lunch with Liz, it was a short stroll to see the new Banksy statue in Waterloo Place, erected in the dead of Wednesday night. It shows a man marching forward, one foot off the edge of the plinth, and blinded by the flag he is carrying. Banksy is that rare thing, a genius. But to whom is he referring? No prizes for the correct answer.
*****
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Three days early but here's to David Attenborough, National Treasure, Greatest Living Englishman and everyone's Dream Dinner Party Guest. Watkins claims to have met him while still at school but I suspect it was really Hermione. I met his brother Darling Dickie and when Dickie died David Eliades, a near neighbour, inherited his cleaner who insisted on calling Eliades Sir David.
Quite right too.
*****
AND FINALLY
Stephen Fry was in Dublin in 1991 standing outside his hero Oscar Wilde’s birthplace in Merrion Square. Astonished to see no plaque to commemorate the event, he encounters a Dub who asks him: “Are ye lookin’ for himself?” “Well, yes”.
“The church won’t have him on the wall. They bugger little boys but they won’t have Oscar on the wall.”
I’m happy to report that a plaque was soon erected in the new secular Ireland along with a statue of the old bugger.
ALAN FRAME
5 May 2026
