Next week:

Think back a year. In September 2025, Patriots for Europe had secured a topical debate on the European Parliament’s agenda: “After 10 years, time to end mass migration now – protect our women and children”. This provoked howls of outrage from the left. Several political groups tried to have the debate taken off the agenda. The following month, the European Parliament was scheduled to debate statements by the Council and the Commission under the heading “Combating violence against women and girls, including the exploitation of motherhood”. These two debates should undoubtedly be combined and held again in the European Parliament, now that The Economist has published the chart reproduced below. Coming from a country where the truth is not taboo - as it so often is elsewhere in Europe on these subjects - I am not in the least surprised. In England and Wales in 2020–22, Afghan nationals had a sexual-offence conviction rate roughly seven times that of British nationals. For nationals of countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the rate was around three to four times as high. These figures already take differences in age and sex into account. The Economist has also reported Danish calculations showing that immigrants from the wider Middle East and North Africa, together with their descendants, accounted for a substantial net cost to the public purse. I can add that, in the Danish Ministry of Finance’s figures for 2019, the negative net fiscal contribution of their Danish-born descendants persists even after differences in age are taken into account. It is, frankly, astonishing that centre-left parties keep wringing their hands over so-called “right-wing populism”, while refusing to face the truth - and shaming those who speak it. In doing so, they are helping to pour petrol on the fire.