The battle for border control

Once a fervent Tory supporter, the Yorkshire businessman long since transferred his considerable financial backing to Eurosceptic causes.

And now mass European immigration has further appalled Mr Sykes, to the point where he is an unabashed supporter of the UK Independence Party, believing that only victory for Ukip in next year’s European elections will convince the Government to hold an early referendum on EU membership.

Nor can it be said that Mr Sykes is swimming against the political tide here. The poll findings he has released today show a huge majority of Yorkshire respondents opposing the imminent lifting of border controls on Romanians and Bulgarians.

Indeed, even former Labour Ministers such as David Blunkett and Jack Straw are now expressing misgivings about the immigration policy they once espoused, with Mr Straw admitting that Labour’s opening of Britain’s borders to immigrants from Eastern Europe was a “spectacular mistake”.

This is hardly surprising. According to official figures, over the past 15 years, 75 per cent of all jobs created were taken by people born outside Britain. Not only did the influx of European migrants torpedo every attempt by New Labour to tackle unemployment, it has also bedevilled the present Government’s attempts to move people off benefits and the situation is likely to get worse once the restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants are lifted in January.

Mr Sykes, then, is hardly alone in his concerns. But the answer he seeks, an in/out referendum on EU membership, giving the British people the chance to reclaim control of their own borders, will not come about if support for Ukip splits the Right-of-centre vote at the 2015 General Election.

Given that none of the mainstream parties is in favour of a referendum before then, surely Mr Sykes must accept that the only such party offering one in the next parliament is the party he has rejected, David Cameron’s Conservatives.

As hard as it is for Mr Sykes and his cohorts to stomach, the more they concentrate on drumming up support for Ukip, the more likely it is that the result they want least will come about, namely the return to power of Labour, the prospect of the most EU-compliant government this country has ever known and the question of EU membership consigned to oblivion, perhaps for generations to come.

Good in parts

TEMPTING as it is to express unbridled joy at Britain’s burgeoning growth figures, there can be no cause for complacency as long as the recovery remains so unevenly spread.

As the latest figures from the National Careers Service show, jobs confidence in this region still lags behind that in the South.

In Leeds, however, the figure – which measures feelings of job security and confidence among the unemployed about finding work – is one of the highest in the country, believed to be the result of investment in the city’s new Arena and the Trinity Leeds shopping centre.

Just as the national recovery is imbalanced, then, with London and the South-East soaking up a disproportionate amount of investment, so the region’s own revival is showing itself only in pockets of success, with other areas of Yorkshire, such as Sheffield and Hull, still exhibiting low levels of job confidence.

Indeed, it seems that every success on Britain’s long road back from recession only serves to highlight surrounding failures and this is also true within the Leeds City Region itself.

Understandably, the city-region’s Local Enterprise Partnership has been quick to welcome these new figures.

But the Leeds City 
Region is a large and varied place and the success of Leeds itself cannot be allowed to overshadow the need to redouble regeneration efforts in those areas that are less successful, notably Bradford, one of the largest cities in Britain.

If the recovery is to be a lasting one, it has to benefit as many areas of the country as possible and only when that is happening will the time have come for congratulations.

The little master

HIS departing the crease befitted the manner in which he has occupied it for so long. Without waiting for the umpire to give him out, Sachin Tendulkar walked off the field in Mumbai and into the pages of cricketing history.

Yet as remarkable as the batting records that fell to him during his 24-year career is the modesty, indeed the humility, with which he conducted himself throughout.

These qualities were already evident in the summer of 1992 when Tendulkar created another landmark by becoming Yorkshire’s first overseas player.

Excelling on the pitch and off, he played an indelible part in the club’s history, advertising Yorkshire to the county’s Asian population for the first time.

Tendulkar always insisted that his time in Yorkshire was one of the greatest four-and-a-half months of his life even as he became one of the most popular sportsmen in the world, garnering riches and adulation beyond measure.

It will be a long time before cricket, either in Yorkshire or India, sees his like again.