As we head into the election year expect to hear more rhetoric that blames migration and immigrants for Britain’s growing list of problems.

It isn’t enough that we have people struggling to pay their bills, high interest rates and crumbling buildings – let us focus ourselves on dealing with the immigrants.

This week, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman declared that multiculturalism has “failed” in Europe and threatens social cohesion in the nation state.

In a speech on migration in the United States, she said: “Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.”

She went on to say that ‘multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate’ and that it, ‘has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society.’

The glaring problem with such comments is that the majority of people born of immigrants probably uphold British values more than those with British ancestors.

Yet, we know what she was getting at. It is only the immigrants from a certain part of the world. Clearly, not the Aussie who ridicules us when his country wins an Ashes test.

The Home Secretary has quickly become a poster person for the ‘worried’ masses who want to differentiate between the ‘good immigrants’ and the ‘bad immigrant’.

The idea being that ‘good immigrants’ behave in a certain way and vote in a certain way whilst the ‘bad immigrants’ are the ones who disagree with us or come from a certain culture and religion.

I would gladly fall into the latter category all day long.

It was even more surprising coming from someone who was herself a descendent of an immigrant. I mean, in years to come they may even make her tenure into some political satire. In a hundred years time I can envisage my own ancestors laughing at the sheer stupidity of it all.

Most nations, and that includes Middle Eastern countries, do this to help deflect the attention away from more pressing problems. It is essentially an easy way to reach out to someone who feels they have been ignored at the hands of the immigrant.

Sadly, the tactic is used again and again and generation after generation fall for the same exaggerations.

A decade ago, we had numerous reports that centred on why integration was a huge problem. Much of this on small northern towns like Blackburn and Burnley.

Rather than exploring the issues surrounding this, the attention was focussed on Asian and Muslim neighbourhoods. We had further reports and national TV documentaries that appeared to lay the blame for this on ‘migrant communities’.

The reality was far from this desperate picture of ghettoes and ‘no-go’ areas.

It is startling to see that how much of this gone on the wayside. 

Yet that focus remains, no matter how hard communities have made Britain a better place to live.