Immigration: it’s always them

By Richard North - February 8, 2026

In any discussion about immigration, and the adverse results attendant upon it, there is always very close to the surface a body of commentators who will spring to the defence of immigrants – be they Asian, African, East European or some other. Most often they cry “racist”, although that is a little difficult when the perpetrator is a white European.

Nobody went quite so far as to call me a racist in the comments on my piece yesterday, although it wouldn’t have been the first time that epithet has been levied at me.

There is little doubt though, amongst ordinary people – as opposed to the political, media and public service elites – that the mood is changing. People are not only more prone to noticing the downsides of letting criminal elements into the country, they are also more inclined to call them out, whether on social media or elsewhere.

And there is good cause. In reviewing the newspapers for material for this post, a happened upon this piece in the Telegraph headlined: “Man ‘stabbed his mother to death’ in front of bus passengers” and such is my general state of weary cynicism that I immediately asked myself: “Is it them again?”.

Sure enough, no sooner had I read: “A man allegedly chased his mother on an e-scooter and stabbed her to death in front of bus passengers in north-west London”, than – reminiscent of the meme pictured – the names appeared, the report reading: “Najiib Raytaan, 25, is accused of murdering 50-year-old Amaal Raytaan after she had visited his home in Willesden on Saturday”.

The surname itself is Arabic and derives from the name of one of the highest places of heaven in Islam. According to this site, it is most prevalent in Egypt, which is the most likely heritage of this violent thug and his now-departed mother.

One can accept the caution that too much should not be read into one incident, but I have to say that, in nearly 80 years on this planet, I do not recall any report of an Englishman slaughtering his mother on the streets of London.

All too often, though, the ethnicity of criminals is not disclosed in press reports, and the names – where given – do not always indicate origin. One might recall that, before he was named, the perpetrator of the Southport stabbings in July 2024 was described as a Welsh choirboy.

Every now and again, though, the overt criminality of some migrant communities becomes so obvious that even the legacy media can’t avoid noticing it, as they have done – often reluctantly – with the grooming gangs of Rotherham, Rochdale and elsewhere.

But, on the back of the news of a particularly egregious murder of a student in De Montfort University, it is now the turn of Leicester for the spotlight, as it features in an article in the Telegraph headed: “Leicester is no multicultural success – it is a stark warning to the rest of Britain”.

Freelance writer Simone Hanna expands on her headline with the sub-head telling us that: “Increasing knife crime in the East Midlands city exposes how failed social cohesion is eroding public space”, as she sets out the story of a failed city, living with the consequences of neglect – a former industrial hub transformed rapidly by demographic change, ethnic division, and political fragmentation.

The murdered student in this case was 20-year-old Khaleed Oladipo, a Yoruba Nigerian. The 18-year-old charged with his murder is named as Harper Dennis, of North Road, West Drayton in London. No photograph has been published and no details of his ethnicity have been given – a suspicious sign, where no description can often be taken as a full description.

Hanna takes up the story of the once solidly white, working-class city, telling of many areas, now ridden with crime and failed social cohesion, which were constructed in the 19th century for factory workers – dense, functional and socially legible. When industry collapsed in the post-war decades, she writes, the city did not replace those foundations.

From the 1960s onward, Leicester underwent a demographic transformation at a pace few British cities matched, becoming one of the first where the white British population ceased to be a majority. This was presented as progress, and the debate ended there, with Hanna observing that Leicester “is now another poster child for multiculturalism”, held up as proof that diversity could simply “work”.

As always, though, that is surface gloss which obscures the “deeper realities of parallel communities and imported tensions”. In the 1970s, Hanna writes, Black Power movements in Leicester and across the UK brought together African, Afro-Caribbean and Asian activists in a shared struggle against racism and discrimination.

That moment of solidarity was real, she says, but it did not survive the pressures of scale, identity politics and generational change. What replaced it was not cohesion, but another city of coexistence. That fragility was briefly exposed in 2022, when clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups erupted onto the streets, drawing national attention for a moment.

Although it faded from view, the underlying issues never went away and the recent murder at De Montfort university brought police cordons and the now-familiar language of shock. The incident was horrific, says Hanna, but it also punctured the veneer of civic calm that local politicians like to project.

Knife crime has been a persistent part of urban Britain’s story. In England and Wales, more than 50,000 offences involving a sharp instrument were recorded in 2025, with youths among those most at risk and kitchen knives still the most common weapon in homicides nationwide. Around 86 percent more knife crime is recorded now compared with a decade ago, even as police statistics show some fluctuations year-to-year.

Local statistics reinforce a similar pattern in Leicester itself. Recent reporting based on police records found that the city experienced over 770 knife-related incidents in 2022/23, up year-on-year, with gangs and territorial conflict cited as key drivers. Other estimates suggest that Leicester’s knife crime rate sits among the highest in the UK when adjusted for population.

This week’s stabbing was not an isolated outlier, Hanna states. Only weeks earlier, the same university became the first in Britain to announce a switch to round-tipped knives in its canteens – a decision driven explicitly by fears of violence among students and staff. It was a telling moment: when a city redesigns its utensils rather than confronts the conditions producing knife crime, key ground has already been conceded.

Hanna tells of a former student who lived nearby who speaks of the transformation being gradual but unmistakable: “The area has changed completely over the last few years. It used to be students and nurses – people going to the university or the hospital. Now the gangs that used to operate on the other side of the river and around Bede Park have pushed towards the city centre”, she says.

The narrative continues as we are informed that: “There are shortcuts and side streets everyone just knows not to use anymore. You see people behaving strangely all the time – obvious drug users, shady characters everywhere. After dark, it’s fifty–fifty whether someone shouts abuse at you across the road”.

“Police”, the former student says, “are too tied up patrolling the city centre at night – dealing with drunk students or when Muslim and Hindu gangs come out from their respective areas and make their presence known around the clock tower. Places like where this happened are completely neglected”.

Says Hanna, this language reflects something politicians rarely articulate: a sense of territorial retreat, where ordinary residents quietly redraw their mental maps of the city – streets to avoid, times to stay inside, spaces surrendered.

The political response, as ever, she says, “was measured and consoling” – the usual anodyne, complacent extruded verbal material. Conservative MP Shivani Raja, of Indian heritage, describes Leicester as a “close-knit, warm and welcoming city” united against violence.

“It is undeniable that there has been a rise in knife crime in recent years”, she says, adding: “We must look at the deeper causes and what is motivating young people to react with violence”. Meanwhile, the local Leicester Gazette has launched a fundraiser for bleed control kits.

What Hanna does – which makes her piece worthy of note – is contrast the experience on the ground and political language, identifying “a widening gap”. One speaks of fear, territory, and retreat from public space. The other speaks in the careful, consoling language of responsibility and reflection. Neither is dishonest, but they are not the same thing.

In concluding her piece, she states that Leicester is not uniquely bad. Nor is it uniquely violent. But what makes it significant is that it is early. Early in demographic change, early in political fragmentation, early in the quiet erosion of public space.

Unlike Birmingham which has been forced into the national conversation by scale and spectacle, Leicester has slipped through, small enough to ignore, large enough to matter.

But what she doesn’t say is that mirroring Leicester is Slough, Luton, Coventry, Nottingham, Sheffield and a whole raft of northern towns and cities, from Dewsbury to Rochdale and beyond which have been corrupted and spoiled by multi-culturalism.

And behind the honeyed words of the politicians and the quick resort to accusations of racism, there is one main cause: it’s always them.