If you want the ultimate example of how insane this Government is, look no further than this latest wheeze.
Leo McKinstry says mass immigration is leading to ‘national bankruptcy’ (Image: Daily Express/Getty)
A sense of betrayal is sweeping across our land, fuelled by deepening anger at the Labour government, which seems to care little about the rights of the British public, preferring to promote socialist dogma and reward its favoured client groups. As a result of the recent shambolic budget, the tax burden and welfare spending will now soar to record levels when both should be cut. In addition, the unsustainable expansion in social security will act as another pull factor for migrants, particularly from Africa, the Middle East and Africa. In the last year, no fewer than 3.4 million people born overseas have claimed benefits.
To bankroll a swelling influx of workless foreign nationals is the politics of the madhouse. Mass immigration was hailed by its supporters as the route to prosperity. Instead it is becoming the path to national bankruptcy. And nothing symbolises this insanity more graphically than the government’s outrageous willingness not only to subsidise polygamous marriages – where a husband has several wives – but even to increase the taxpayer-funded benefits to them.
In an announcement this week that deserved far more coverage than it received, the Department of Work and Pensions declared that welfare payments to additional spouses in such marriages, currently worth up to £6,513 a year, are to rise by an inflation-busting 4.8% or £299 from next April.
What this disgraceful step actually reveals is the utter decadence at the heart of the public realm, where the concept of equality before the law is treated with contempt. After all, though polygamy might be accepted in much of the Muslim world, bigamy is still a serious crime in Britain.
Yet now we have the bizarre spectacle of our own government agreeing to lavish more public money on marital arrangements that are generally illegal here and contravene our traditional way of life.
In this case, the devious British state, more keen on getting round the law than enforcing it, has invented a loophole to allow this racket to continue. The previous Labour government decreed that, for social security purposes, polygamous marriages with up to four spouses would be “considered valid” in Britain if they had been contracted overseas “in a country that permits polygamy”.
Attempting to lessen any public outcry, Ministers have always insisted the numbers involved are small and in decline. Although there are no official records, one recent estimate from Whitehall is that there are fewer than 1,000 polygamous marriages in the UK. But that smacks of wishful thinking and deliberate misinformation.
The Civil Service is notorious for its wild numerical inaccuracies over immigration, partly because of its determination to downplay the impact of abandoning proper border controls. That is what seems to be happening here. More than a decade ago, in 2014, a Channel Four documentary on this issue stated that there were probably 20,000 polygamous Muslim marriages in Britain.
Given the expansion of immigration and welfare since 2014, the total of marriages has almost certainly shot up. In fact, there are now dating apps and websites for Muslims seeking multiple partners, like “Muslima”, for “Muslim women who accept polygamy” and “Second Wife”, which promotes “Faith-based Muslim Marriage,” founded by the north-eastern businessman Azad Chaiwala, who claims that his online match-making services have more than 100,000 followers.
The use of taxpayers’ money in this area illustrates two profoundly depressing themes in modern Britain. One is the growth of two-tier justice, despite all the fashionable official blather about equality. So social media users can find themselves questioned, arrested, even imprisoned for daring to challenge the ruling orthodoxy, yet bigamists are rewarded by the state.
In this culture of discrimination, women in particular are increasingly treated as second-class citizens, vulnerable to the rampant, sometimes violent misogyny in our midst.
This brings us to the second disturbing them: the accelerating Islamification of Britain, reflected in demands for special blasphemy laws, the creeping acceptance of Sharia jurisdiction, the calls to prayer now echoing across many of our cities, the adoption of oppressive dress codes and the rise of sectarianism in our politics.
Tragically, there is little hope Labour will change course and fight for our national integrity.
