Bernard Ingham: Fleeing migrants can find refuge in nation of lunacy

It isn’t for the Glorious Twelfth and the grouse. It’s because they have got it made if they get through, especially if they are into housebreaking. After all, one of our police forces has – as a public relations exercise, to boot – omitted to investigate burglaries at odd-numbered houses. They claim to have found no “noticeable impact on victim satisfaction”.

This is no doubt because those, like me, who dwell on the wrong side of the street are as thick as two planks, would not know we had been burgled even if the place was stripped bare and are delighted to discover we have a friendly neighbourhood police force when they come asking us if we like their investigatory neglect.

If you are also unfortunately addicted, you will soon discover that you can grow cannabis for your personal use with impunity.

On the other hand, you should do your level best to stay alive. If you kick the bucket, you run the risk of the police, however neglectful elsewhere, mounting an investigation into your sex life. At least five forces are now poring over the late Edward Heath’s alleged predilection for boys on top of heaven only knows how many others looking into the recently deceased Leon Brittan’s supposed sexual activities.

In view of the Press calls I am receiving about Sir Edward and Lord Brittan, I should perhaps make two things clear.

First, I have no cause to revere either of them. Heath once called me “a menace to the constitution”, which I thought a bit rich since he abolished Yorkshire at a stroke in 1974.

And ex-Home Secretary Brittan falsely accused me of sanctioning the leaking of the Solicitor General’s letter to Michael Heseltine during the Westland affair. In fact, he wanted me to leak it but I refused point blank, saying: “I must keep the Prime Minister above that sort of thing.”

But, second, I never heard a word about their alleged sexual proclivities in my 11 years, one month and five days in No 10. In my view they are victims of the current fashion for seeking compensation for imagined acts from those who are conveniently dead.

But to return to this paradise for the still vigorous would-be immigrant. It is not simply that we are acquiring by stealth – the stealth of demented chief officers – a police force that chooses which crimes to pursue (apart from alleged sexual peccadilloes) in the name of a shortage of resources.

We natives have lost all sense of what is legal and illegal. You can bet your bottom quid that some do-gooder will rise up in defence of any illegal visitor and that the average court will find a reason for his not being deported because of his entitlement to a family life in place of the one he has left a few thousand miles behind him. In the unlikely event of an unfriendly English judge, Strasbourg provides a reliable fall back.

Lying behind all this infrastructure of help for individuals who have no entitlement whatsoever to enter Britain, are a host of charities whose support for illegality would perhaps be investigated by a serious police force.

I doubt whether Kids Company, run – or not, as the case may be - by that colourful cove, Camilla Batmanghelidjh, has had much to do with illegal immigrants. But it typifies the problem with charities. Any old Tom, Dick or Harry – or Camilla Batman, as she might more conveniently be called – seems to think they can set up a charity in the full expectation that public money will flow endlessly their way.

It may well be that the Kids Company has done some good work among disadvantaged children. But, however reluctant political leaders are to risk the odium of turning it down, it cannot expect the taxpayer to throw money at it indefinitely – and without checks – with or without a Government budget deficit of £75bn.

It is, of course, conceivable that so-called refugees from foreign lands are further encouraged to hot foot it to England now that Jeremy Corbyn leads the race for the Labour Party’s leadership. He promises to be very free with our cash and seems to be comprehensive in his love of his fellow men. He can’t find a wrong word to say about the IRA or Hamas.

Welcome to the loony bin.