Thursday, 3 July 2025

The UK Climate and Nature Bill

Here in Surrey, the recent spells of fine, dry and warm – sometimes very warm – weather have been most pleasant. Particularly as I am now on my way to recovery from the broken arm which I sustained back in January. Yesterday, for the first time in months, I took my camera down to my local lake, Broadwater Lake in Farncombe, to see how the wildlife was getting along this year. I was astonished!

Five years ago, there were usually 15 to 20 new goslings each summer. But since then, with three of the springs and summers having been dry and warm, the goose population has exploded. Two years ago, there were about 50 new young ones; last year, 80. And this year – well, you can see what has happened. There must be at least 60 or 70 geese in the picture. There were more behind me and to my left. And this is only one of two spots around the lake where they like to congregate. The ducks are doing almost as well, too. Warm weather is not only pleasant for humans; it’s great for the wildlife, too!

But not everyone agrees. A Liberal Democrat MP named Roz Savage is sponsoring a “climate and nature bill,” which is currently going through the parliamentary procedure. Showing the religious zeal, arrogance and recklessness typical of deep green activists, Ms Savage’s bill seeks to pose some very serious threats, if it were to become law, to the UK economy, to our energy and industrial future, and to the freedoms of all of us.

The bill’s progress

This bill was first introduced to the Commons in October 2024. It is a private member’s bill, begun in 2021, and now sponsored by the Lib Dem MP for South Cotswolds. It had its second reading on 24th January 2025, at which debate was adjourned until Friday July 11th. As I write this, that date is only a few days away.

The bill’s text

You can find the text of the bill, as submitted for the second reading, here: [[1]]. It identifies itself as a bill: “To require the United Kingdom to meet climate and nature targets. To give the Secretary of State a duty to implement a strategy to achieve those targets. To establish a Climate and Nature Assembly to advise the Secretary of State in creating that strategy. To give duties to the Committee on Climate Change and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee regarding the strategy and targets. And for connected purposes.”

Among the official parliamentary supporters of the bill (on the last page) are two Lib Dem MPs, four Labour, one Labour Co-op, two Tories, one Green, one SNP and one Plaid Cymru.

Zero Hour

This bill is the brainchild of a climate campaign group called Zero Hour. Their site [[2]] describes them as “74,505 people calling for the Government to deliver REAL change for climate and nature.” To put that number in context, it is less than a third of the current Reform UK party membership.

But they have a large number of declared supporters, some of them very influential. Among these are 190 MPs (almost 30 per cent of the Commons!). Of these, 80 are Labour, 72 Lib Dems (their entire parliamentary caucus!), twelve Independents including Jeremy Corbyn, seven SNP, five Labour Co-op, four Greens, four Plaid Cymru, two SDLP, two Tories, one Alliance and one DUP. They also have 54 peers, including seven bishops. Six mayors, including Sadiq Khan. Eight MSPs and three members of the Welsh Senedd. No less than fifteen political parties, and more than 200 “scientists.” (I give that word scare quotes, because many of them are no more than paid shills for deep green agendas, and some wouldn’t know the scientific method if it hit them on the nose.) Oh, and 35 faith leaders.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of this list is the 377 local councils, at various levels, that have declared their support for this organization and its bill. These include four county councils: Cambridgeshire, Devon, Oxfordshire and Rutland. 30 borough councils, including five in Surrey: Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Runnymede, Surrey Heath and Waverley. And 27 district councils, including Mole Valley. Half the local councils in Surrey – including mine – have chosen to place themselves on this list of shame! Without even asking us.

A few details

So, here are some of the low-lights in the bill.

1)     1(2)(a). It sets a “climate target” based on the Paris agreement. It commits to reaching this target (whatever it is by then, and regardless of how unachievable it might be) in 2030, in 2035, and forever into the future. This represents a series of commitments, made by successive governments to the United Nations on our behalves, without we ordinary people having ever been consulted, or had any chance to object. And the commitment is completely open-ended.

2)     1(2)(b). It sets a “nature target” that demands that the UK “halts and reverses its overall contribution to the degradation and loss of nature in the United Kingdom and overseas.” Again, this is an open-ended commitment, about which we the people have never even been consulted.

3)     2(6) sets out a whole raft of requirements:

a)     Most of all, point (d): “Ensuring the end of the exploration, export and import of fossil fuels by the United Kingdom as rapidly as possible.” That simply can’t work in the current state of technology. To give up fossil fuels when we do not have any other abundant, affordable, reliable energy sources would be civilizational suicide.

b)     Point (g): “ensuring that all activities in the United Kingdom which affect the health, abundance, diversity and resilience of species, populations and ecosystems prioritise avoidance of the loss of nature…” That sounds to me like a complete top-down takeover of the entire farming industry, likely with very serious negative effects. As happened in Sri Lanka in 2022, where government, by imposing green policies on farmers, caused a famine: [[3]].

c)     Point (h), demanding avoidance, limiting, restoring or offsetting of “adverse impacts in the United Kingdom and overseas on ecosystems and human health” of “United Kingdom-generated production and consumption of goods and services” and “all related trade, transport and financing.” This looks to me like an explicit demand to end all economic freedom for everyone in the UK.

d)     Point (i), demanding “a presumption against large scale energy products over 100MW generation capacity.” This amounts to a presumption against all nuclear power, since even small modular reactors (SMRs) average around 300MW. They want to allow “nimbys” to be able to block everyone else from access to the abundant energy supplies, which our civilization will need going forward.

4)     3(1). Requires an expert independent body to establish “a Climate and Nature Assembly… comprising a representative sample of the United Kingdom population.” This looks like an attempt to repeat the saga of the UK Climate Assembly, a travesty of democracy that was pushed by Extinction Rebellion, and about which I have already written, here: [[4]].

5)     3(4). The involvement of the CCC does not bode well for the impartiality of such a body. The CCC has persistently peddled extremism about the climate change scam, and over decades has failed even to try to produce an objective, unbiased cost-benefit analysis of nett zero policies. Nor does the involvement of JNCC, which says it “focuses on turning robust scientific evidence into action for nature conservation and recovery.” [[5]].

The parliamentary debate - 1

Hansard has done its usual thorough job of recording the parliamentary debate, which took place on January 24th. It is in two parts: [[6]], [[7]].

Ms Savage started by talking about “the intertwined climate and nature crises.” Even though, for those of us who look at the evidence, there is no climate crisis. At least, not one caused by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. As I recently documented, here: [[8]].

She denigrated what she perceives as the direction of travel of our industrial and fossil-fuel civilization, calling it “a strip mine next to a rubbish tip next to a shopping mall.” We must hope that her strip mine was not one of those producing lithium for EV batteries! And she identified the drafters of her bill as “world-leading climate scientists, ecologists and conservationists.” Not exactly unbiased parties, then.

The “State of Nature” report

She referenced a 2023 “State of Nature” report, here: [[9]]. It is produced by “a collaboration of over 60 partners.” These include Friends of the Earth, the afore-mentioned JNCC, and the World Wildlife Fund. Again, hardly unbiased. Prompting thoughts such as: Is this report peer-reviewed? If so, by whom? And where is the raw data, to allow those who so wish to replicate the work? Even the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) maintains at least a pretence of having some science behind their reports. But here, I see nothing.

I took the, perhaps unwise, step of skim-reading this report. Without ever quite being explicit about it, the tone suggests subtly that we humans are not natural (as we obviously are), but are in some way separate from “nature” and hostile to it. The report says, for example: “Nature needs space to live and flourish, but around the globe we humans have decreased and diminished those spaces.” (Prompting a retort, “if you want an easy way to cap the impact of humans on nature in the UK, why don’t you stop taking in all those immigrants?”)

Then I saw that “Goal A of the Global Biodiversity Framework commits parties to halt human-induced extinctions of threatened species.” I was reminded that I have many times asked environmentalists to name even one species to whose extinction I have contributed, and to say exactly what I did to contribute to that extinction, and approximately when. I have never gotten an answer to this; not even one. Are we, perhaps, being denied over these issues our basic human right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty?

I will mention, in conclusion, that the phrase “climate change” occurs in the report no less than 101 times. And I will offer the following as a perfect example of propaganda without even a microgram of proof or science: “Climate change is accelerating and the negative impacts on nature are likely to increase.”

The parliamentary debate - 2

To return to Ms Savage. “Through the global biodiversity frame-work, the Government have committed to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.” So, 30 per cent of the UK land and sea area – our land and sea – is to be out of bounds to human beings, permanently? Who will own and manage it? And how can this be anything but a giant land- (and sea-) grab?

Next: “we cannot go wrong in moving away from fossil fuels, given the implications for air quality as well as for the climate.” I see a giant red flag here; for I know a lot about the “science” and history of air pollution toxicology in the UK. Due to lack of space, I will have to leave that story for another day. But it’s not one that reflects well on UK governments.

She moaned about “expanding deserts.” (No: places like the Sahel are actually greening). “Melting ice caps.” (Not really: Greenland’s will take 20,000 years to melt, and Antarctica is gaining ice). “British moorlands on fire.” (Nothing new: I remember 1976.) And “rainfall, which is becoming increasingly heavy as climate change kicks in.” (Prove it, Madam!)

Then we had the old chestnut about seeing far less bugs on car windscreens now than 60 years ago. That may be true, but the main reason is not any lack of the bugs themselves, but the aerodynamic shape of modern car windscreens. Take a long journey on the upper deck of a double-decker bus in high summer, and you will see more splatted bugs than you could possibly wish for. (I did in August 2023).

Clive Lewis, Labour MP and one of the bill’s official supporters, talked of “climateflation.” He described this as “the stubborn inflation where the basic staples of life, such as food and water, increasingly become more costly.” Now, this phenomenon is indeed real. But it is not caused, as Mr Lewis claims, by “the climate crisis.” Its cause is actually the green political policies, such as “nett zero,” that have been put in place by successive governments. When energy is unnecessarily expensive, everything becomes unnecessarily expensive.

To his credit, the Tory shadow minister, Andrew Bowie, responded with relative sanity. “It is clear that we should not support the damaging measures the Bill would require.” “Aligning to the targets, which the Bill would oblige the Secretary of State to achieve, would require even more drastic action to reduce emissions.” And: “we cannot say that we want to protect farmland and the great British countryside while seeking to approve at pace large-scale renewable projects that would do the exact opposite.” I wonder why Mr Bowie was not trumpeting these points from the roof-tops a year ago, when his party was still in power?

Tory MP Greg Smith was even more forthright. He even had the guts to state the blazingly obvious: “Fossil fuels will be needed for decades to come.” But unfortunately, his credibility as a truth-teller, along with all other Tories elected before 2024, is less than absolute zero, given that he co-operated with Johnson and Sunak in what they did to us when in power.

The debate was adjourned at 1:53pm, to be resumed on Friday 11th July.

In conclusion

This would seem like an opportunity for Reform UK to make some waves. For example, by inquiring:

1)     Why the United Nations is being allowed to control UK government policies – and has been for more than 30 years, regardless of which party has been in power.

2)     What specific evidence there is of the “degradation of nature” that we, the people of the UK, are accused of having caused, and that implicates us as individuals in causing it.

3)     Why a private member’s bill is being used to introduce “by the back door” policies as radical as ending the use of fossil fuels, taking over farming, destroying economic freedom, and establishing a presumption against nuclear power.

4)     How these policies could possibly be in the interests of the people of the UK in the current economic situation. Or, indeed, at any other time.

5)     Why the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party have expressed unanimous support for illiberal policies, that undemocratically go against the interests of the people of the UK.


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Friday, 27 June 2025

Why there is no climate crisis

 

One very significant difference between Reform UK’s policies and those of the other parties is that Reform intends to scrap so-called “net zero.” This refers to draconian restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from human activities, enshrined in the “Paris Agreement” at the 2015 United Nations Conference of the Parties.

In the words of Reform’s Contract with You: “Net zero is pushing up bills, damaging British industries like steel, and making us less secure… We must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets.” This is, of course, simple common sense. Yet, as one who has been studying the subject of CO2 emissions in detail for almost two decades, I find a vital word missing from that second sentence: “unnecessary.”

For in reality, net zero policies are based on nothing more than scares about some “climate crisis,” that alarmists claim requires us to throw away our industry and our prosperity. But these scares have no basis in reality. This makes the conduct of those that have lied or deceived in order to fan the scares, or have promoted, supported, made or enforced such policies, most reprehensible. In my opinion, they have committed crimes against humanity.

Two years ago, I wrote a 7,300-word de-bunk of the climate crisis meme, and had it published at “the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change.” Here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/15/climate-crisis-what-climate-crisis-part-one-the-evidence/. This article is a much cut down, and slightly updated, précis of that one.

The six claims

To begin, I’ll ask: What are the specific accusations being made against us human beings under the moniker of “climate change” or “global warming?” I divide them into six claims:

1.     It’s warming. It has been warming since at least 1880 or so. And the warming is global, not just local or regional.

2.     This warming is unprecedented.

3.     All or most of the warming is the result of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by human civilization. And CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels is the main culprit.

4.     This warming will have significant negative effects on the planet and on human well-being and prosperity.

5.     The benefits from avoiding the negative consequences of this warming outweigh the costs of taking pre-emptive action to avoid them.

6.     It’s a crisis! There’s a climate crisis, and we need to act NOW!

Is it warming?

It’s commonly agreed that the climate has been warming for centuries, as the world has come out of the “Little Ice Age,” which lasted from the 14th century to the middle of the 19th.

Now, there are many problems with assembling temperature measurements, made by different means over a long period of time, into a coherent whole. And even more problems with in-filling and extending them to places with no measurements, in the search to construct a global average. But there is general agreement that global temperatures have been warming since the 17th century. And that they have warmed very close to 1 degree Celsius since 1880.

On the other hand, an issue which has recently gained attention is the possibility of temperature bias through the urban heat island effect (UHI). UHI is, simply, that it tends to be warmer in places which are more densely populated. Because cities form a very small proportion of the earth’s surface, UHI alone cannot account for anything like the warming we have seen. But since the places in which we make measurements tend to be the places where we have settlements, it is possible that extending these measurements over areas for which we have no data may produce an apparent warming, which is not there in reality.

Is modern warming unprecedented?

Past records show temperatures going up and down by large amounts, sometimes over relatively short time periods. For example, there was a huge dip into, and an even bigger rebound out of, the trough of the Little Ice Age.

Moreover, there have been periods in the past, when temperatures have been considerably warmer than in the times around them. For example, the Mediaeval Warm Period from about the 10th to the 13th century, during which commerce took off in Southern Europe. And the Roman Warm Period from about 250 BC to 400 AD, during which grapes could be grown in Scotland; suggesting it was warmer then than it is now. So, the idea that modern warming is unprecedented is, in Scottish parlance, “not proven.”

Is CO2 from human activities the main cause of the warming?

There is a plausible scientific hypothesis that says that greenhouse gases, including CO2, do cause some warming. This warming is what they call a “forcing.” It is relatively small; about 1 degree Celsius for a doubling of CO2 is considered reasonable.

But the alarmists claim this initial, small warming then gets amplified by “feedbacks” such as evaporation from the oceans (water vapour is a far stronger greenhouse gas than CO2!), and changes in cloud cover. The alarmists think the feedbacks are large, causing instability; skeptics think they are small, or even negative. But the science of feedbacks is in no way settled. No-one even knows whether, overall, more cloud cover causes warming or cooling!

We hear a lot about “attribution studies,” supposedly trying to work out how much of the observed warming is due to CO2, to other human activities such as land use change, or to causes independent of human activity. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that virtually all these studies are being driven by politics, not by science.

Another issue, currently being looked at, is how far air pollution reductions over the last 70 years or so have increased the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, and therefore the temperature. It seems plausible this may have had an effect. Perhaps, even, a big one.

Would warming be bad for the planet and for us?

Historically, human civilizations have tended to thrive during warmer periods rather than colder ones. Indeed, I for one would expect that a moderately warmer world – say 4 or 5 degrees Celsius warmer – would be better for us, not worse. But the alarmists keep on screaming about the TERRIBLE consequences if “we” don’t reduce CO2 emissions and stop the warming RIGHT NOW! Who is right? That needs proper, objective cost-benefit analysis.

Is it worth taking pre-emptive action to avoid the consequences of the warming?

My researches have shown consistent failure by the UK government, over two decades, to do any proper cost-benefit analysis on “net zero” or related policies. Indeed, at several points, they have gone out of their way to prevent any such analysis being done! This is very suspicious indeed.

To avoid this article becoming over-long, I’ll write up those researches in a separate article.

Is there evidence for a climate crisis?

What evidence is being presented that there is a “climate crisis?” Or, indeed, that there is any problem with the climate at all? Here is a list of some of the things the alarmists are howling about. In almost every case, they claim that these things are happening now.

(Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth). Weather disasters are becoming worse and more frequent! We’re facing more and worse storms and hurricanes! More and worse floods! More and worse droughts! More and worse wildfires! More and stronger heatwaves! More and more people are dying from heatstroke! There are millions of climate refugees! Arctic sea ice is disappearing fast! Because of this, thousands of polar bears are dying! Sea levels are rising fast! And the rate of rise is accelerating! Because of this, islands like Tuvalu and the Maldives are being submerged! Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice fast! This will lead to melting of ice sheets, and catastrophic sea level rise! Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of coral reefs are dying! We soon won’t be able to grow enough food to feed the population! All these things, so they claim, are our fault for emitting so much CO2.

OK, so let’s look at the record.

Are weather disasters becoming worse and more frequent? No. Global deaths from disasters such as droughts, floods and extreme weather have gone down dramatically in the last century or so. The drops in deaths from natural disasters have been even more spectacular when looked at in terms of death rates per 100,000 people.

More and worse storms and hurricanes? No. No trend is evident in global hurricane frequency. And cyclone energy in the Northern Hemisphere has not been increasing in the last 30 years.

More and worse floods? No. Even the United Nations’ IPCC cannot say whether flooding on a global level is increasing or decreasing.

More and worse droughts? No. Deaths from droughts, floods and extreme weather have gone down dramatically in the last century or so. And even the IPCC has low confidence in attributing changes in drought over global land areas since the mid-20th century to human influence.

More and worse wildfires? Not proven. A 2016 peer-reviewed paper had this to say: “Many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends.”

More and stronger heatwaves? No. In the USA, heatwaves in the 1930s were an order of magnitude stronger than in any of the previous or subsequent decades. There is no apparent trend in the rest of the data.

More and more people dying from heatstroke? No. Deaths reported as caused by “extreme temperatures” peaked around the 2000s, but have gone down since. In any case, they are only a small proportion of deaths from all natural disasters. Moreover, a recent paper analyzing data from around the world concluded that deaths caused by cold were approximately ten times as many as deaths caused by heat.

Millions of climate refugees? Not that I am aware of. I certainly haven’t met one. Have you?

Is Arctic sea ice disappearing fast? No. It did reach a low minimum in summer 2012. But by 2021 and 2022, the minimum had rebounded to around 50% above that value.

Are thousands of polar bears dying because low sea ice means they can’t find food? No. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world-wide polar bear population has risen from about 10,000 in the 1960s to 26,000 now. One expert has estimated 32,000 bears.

Are sea levels rising fast? No. As measured by tide gauges, the rate of sea level rise varies a lot by location. This is as you would expect, since some coasts are rising, others falling. But a rise of 1-3 millimetres per year is typical. While in some places better sea defences are advisable (the Dutch have been doing it for centuries!), this is not concerning overall.

Is the rate of sea level rise accelerating? Not proven. Satellite measurements seem to show an acceleration of sea level rise in the last 20 years or so. Tide gauges, in general, don’t. The discrepancy needs to be fully explained before anyone can reasonably claim that an acceleration of sea level rise exists and is a problem.

Are islands like Tuvalu being submerged? No. In a recent survey on a multi-decadal scale, 80 per cent of all the islands surveyed (including Tuvalu) were either growing, or staying about the same size.

Are Antarctica and Greenland losing ice fast? No. The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades. Last I heard, it was gaining ice, not losing it. As to Greenland, at the current rate of melting, to melt the whole of the ice cap would take 20,000 years.

Are hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of coral reefs dying? Not really. The poster child for coral reef bleaching, the Great Barrier Reef, seems, after an iffy period around 2012, to be doing fine. And coral reefs elsewhere are a lot more resilient to changing conditions than they are often given credit for.

Can we grow enough food to feed the population? Yes. Yields of most crops per area farmed have risen over the last 60 years. Meanwhile, more carbon dioxide in the air has had a beneficial effect of “greening” the Earth!

I rest my case, m’lud. And if perchance you are not convinced by any of these statements, please refer to my article at Watts Up with That, which gives links to data and scientific papers on these subjects.


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Sunday, 22 June 2025

Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?

Although I am a Reform UK member and campaign manager, I don’t often talk about immigration. It isn’t one of my hot-button issues; I tend to find things like nett zero and anti-car policies far more worthy of my skills and attention.

My own position on immigration is as follows. First, I see the mass “legal” immigration into the UK, which has been encouraged and, indeed, planned by successive governments, as a far bigger issue than the “illegal” immigration that angers so many. Which, in numerical terms, it very definitely is. And second, my objection to the kid-glove treatment which so many of the illegals receive in the UK is not so much to that treatment itself, as to the insult it forces on to the native population who are expected to pay for it.

Having been trained as a mathematician, I am comfortable with numbers. Those of you, who are allergic to figures, may feel a need to skip a few of the denser parts of this missive. Or, better, persevere, and learn a lesson I myself learned long ago: without numbers, you cannot judge the effectiveness or otherwise of any idea or policy!

I had not much considered the root causes of, and the history behind, this mass immigration. That is, until I recently ran across a United Nations document with the title I have given you above. I found it here: [[1]]. It is dated March 2000. A quarter of a century is a long time in politics! But this document is still most relevant today.

The executive summary defines replacement migration as: “the international migration that would be needed to offset declines in the size of population, the declines in the population of working age, as well as to offset the overall ageing of a population.” The study “computes the size of replacement migration … for a range of countries that have in common a fertility pattern below the replacement level.” These include the UK.

Three main scenarios are defined, and given the Roman numerals III, IV and V. Scenario III seeks to keep the total population constant going forward in time. Scenario IV seeks to keep constant the size of the population aged 15 to 64, which is used as an estimate for the economically productive population. Scenario V seeks to keep constant the ratio between the population aged 15 to 64 and the population aged 65 and over. The rationale behind this (the potential support ratio or PSR) is to assure that there are enough people of economically productive ages going forward to support those who have passed retirement age. The time period, over which the scenarios are calculated, runs from 2000 to 2050.

The “money numbers” are in Table 1 on page 2. To keep the UK population constant, Scenario III, would require net immigration of 53,000 people per year over the entire 50 years. Scenario IV, keeping the productive age group constant, would require 125,000. And Scenario V, striving to keep the PSR constant, needs – wait for it! – 1,194,000. Almost 1.2 million nett immigrants each year, over the whole 50 years, needed to save the welfare state!

The major findings list (page 4) says “few believe that fertility in most developed countries will recover to reach replacement level in the foreseeable future.” “If retirement ages remain essentially where they are today, increasing the size of the working age population through international migration is the only option in the short to medium term to reduce declines in the potential support ratio.” And: “Maintaining potential support ratios at current levels through replacement migration alone seems out of reach, because of the extraordinarily large numbers of migrants that would be required.” Though it also suggests that PSRs could alternatively be maintained by raising the retirement age from 65 to about 75.

The literature review on page 9 states that “no policies to increase the mortality of a population are socially acceptable.” Myself, I’m not so sure. Such policies might perhaps be introduced under guises that look more benevolent than they are. In unlooked-for side-effects of vaccines, for example, or in an assisted dying bill that makes it easier for governments to “persuade” old people to pop off voluntarily. Still, probably only an aged cynic like me would think such things.

More “money numbers” are to be found in Table IV.11 on page 27. Curiously, the UK seems, among all the countries studied, to be the easiest in which to achieve the extreme Scenario V. It would take “only” a 1.54 per cent year on year UK population increase for the whole 50 years to get there. Only Russia is anywhere close. France, Germany, Italy and the USA all need 2 to 3 per cent a year. Japan needs over 3 per cent, and South Korea almost 9 per cent!

The detail section for the UK is on pages 67 to 72. Scenario IV would require “6.2 million immigrants … between 2010 and 2050, which would increase the overall population to 64.3 million in 2050. By that date 13.6 per cent of the total population would be post-1995 migrants or their children.”

If you think that’s bad, how about the extreme Scenario V? “The overall population would reach 136 million in 2050, of which 80 million (59 per cent) would be post-1995 migrants or their descendants.”

These figures were, of course, out of date even the moment they were penned. And a quarter century has elapsed since then. But I’m still going to do what any mathematician or scientist should do. I’ll compare the data against the predictions. Here we go:

The data plotted above comes from the Office for National Statistics: [[2]]. These figures aren’t actually census measurements; but they are calculated by the same method that the United Nations uses for its population predictions, so they’ll do. Look at that knee-bend in about 2003, the effect of Blair’s programme to encourage Poles to come to the UK.

We are already, at 2023, well beyond the “64.3 million by 2050” required for Scenario IV. I’m not even going to try to extrapolate that curve to 2050, but the conclusion is clear. Successive governments have, ever since this UN paper was published in 2000, been aiming for Scenario V, or as near it as they can damned well get.

This explains why whenever a government, Tory or Labour, promises to rein in immigration, it never happens. Indeed, immigration rates always go up, not down. This UN-sponsored policy is a gigantic scam, which has been staring us in the face for a quarter century. Only a few people have seen through it, most of them economists; and these people are not so hard for government to silence, whether with carrot or stick. But when Reform UK and Nigel Farage get hold of this, and start to use it as a political weapon, I think some fur may fly.

The solution will undoubtedly need to be radical. We have to start thinking about, for example, purging from the public sector the many big-government sycophants that infest it. And replacing them with retired people, with the kinds of life-expertise and objectivity which can only come from having been there and done that. This is a very difficult problem to solve without causing grave injustice to many innocent people. But it is also an enormous opportunity for Reform UK.

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