Reform UK leaders have built their politics on attacking immigrants. They paint migrants as a burden, as if people coming to this country contribute nothing but problems. Let’s strip away the lies and look at the facts: Britain was built by immigrants, sustained by immigrants, and continues to thrive because of immigrants.

Dear Farage: A leader must speak facts. If you dare accept it, from the very start, this island has been shaped by those who came from elsewhere. The Romans built the roads and towns. The Anglo-Saxons gave us our language. The Vikings gave us trade, the Normans gave us castles and a new legal system. Britain has never been a “closed nation.”

Fast forward to the modern era; the Irish built the canals and railways. The Huguenots brought skills in weaving and finance. Soldiers from India, Africa, and the Caribbean fought and died for Britain in both World Wars. The Windrush Generation kept our buses moving, cleaned our hospitals, and staffed the NHS when it was born. South Asian migrants set up the corner shops and small businesses that still hold our communities together. Polish and Eastern European workers have kept farms, construction, and hospitals running for the last two decades.

So here’s the blunt truth: imagine what would happen if, in Farage's New Britain, if immigrants pull their skills, labour, and contributions out of this country tomorrow? Nigel’s Britain would collapse. There would be no NHS, no transport, no food supply, no thriving universities, no cultural vibrancy.

Britain is not “full of immigrants”, but Britain is full of opportunity, because the people who built it came from every corner of the globe.  Reform’s poisonous politics insult not only today’s immigrants, but the very history of this nation. 

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By Cllr Nabeela Ali 

Newcastle upon Tyne