It would seem Farage was right...

Dan you're not a stupid chap but it must be said, you're doing a bloody good impression. 

You may have noticed we are currently being invaded, from the EU. That's the same EU who fortified their eastern border with razor wire fences and armed guards, yet turn a blind eye to their western border. The unelected dictators in Brussels are laughing their heads off, behind closed doors of course because Britain must be punished for Brexit. 

Brexit was never going to affect illegal immigration. In theory we had the Dublin 2 agreement (IIRC) that allowed us to return illegals to the country in the EU where they were first registered but I don't think the number of people we managed to return ever got into two figures - partly because most of these people never even registered in the EU.

Brexit DOES allow us to cut legal immigration and we have cut the number coming from the EU. The problem is that the govt caved in to the left of the party and allowed the visa criteria to become far too easy. They were talking about a required salary of around £30k but it's actually set at about the living wage. Also we then had an Indian PM forced on us (with no mandate whatsoever) who has granted vast numbers of visas to Indians. Priti Patel also was responsible for daft regulation that allows students to bring in dependents.

It's a fucking mess - and most of it is down to our govt.

He was right , but IMO a lot of us did not need telling I could see what was happening to my country long before that 

That's also they way I thought about it.

Democratic accountability re-asserted and then the issue pressed. I couldn't see much point in attempting the latter before the former.

There may be truth in that.

If the matter is genuinely un-addressable and the country is going to end up as an offshore province of Pakistan, then the issue of EU membership is somewhat minor.

Immigration as an issue in the debate on Leave or Remain was the deciding factor. Admittedly it was dishonestly presented as mostly illegal non-white from poor Islamic countries, but it did the trick. Polish plumbers, Hungarian dentists, and Spanish waiters were only dragged into the debate to give it some respectability against the argument that carers and medical staff from Africa, Indian sub continent, Philippines, etc were keeping healthcare afloat.

Now the UK is out, it’s obvious that EU membership wasn’t the cause of the “worrying” immigration. And now we’re getting the mixed messages that immigration must be brought down, but we still need to recruit people for the jobs that are short of people — there’s even a suggestion of giving £10k welcomes to teachers from Africa.

It’s not civil war that’s needed, but the UK would benefit from an honest government that could devise a total modern economic plan and present it in a way that the public can understand, debate and, eventually, vote on.

Perhaps the UK requires a coalition of like thinkers with extremes pushed to the fringes. The next general election might give just that…