Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
On Saturday Donald Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, said undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”, repeating language he first used in an interview with right-wing website The National Pulse in September. Across the Atlantic, Rishi Sunak gave a speech in Rome at a right-wing political festival organised by Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, where he said that illegal migration would “overwhelm our countries” unless the problem is tackled. Sunak and Meloni later announced that Britain and Italy would jointly fund a plan to return migrants in Tunisia to their home countries (while Elon Musk popped up to encourage Italians to have more babies). Global anti-immigration rhetoric is growing, but it doesn’t have to be this way, says John Burn-Murdoch in the FT. Canada’s Conservatives are campaigning on the cost of living and a housing crisis rather than weaponising immigration and have opened up a 15-point polling lead. Perhaps Sunak should look to that country for inspiration instead.