OPINION – JJ ANISIOBI: Secure borders matter to everyone but watching masked strangers seize the streets makes it feel like we are trading safety for fear.
We need better borders but this is not the way forward, writes JJ, left (Image: Express / Getty)
We can all agree that Britain needs secure borders. And most of us are sick to the back teeth of seeing boatloads of men crossing the Channel illegally while successive governments promise us they have everything under control – they clearly haven’t.
But if you think the answer is pulling a balaclava over your face, blocking roads and intimidating people, then I’m afraid you’ve completely lost me. What we saw in Dover and Portsmouth wasn’t patriotism. It wasn’t brave and it certainly wasn’t the best of Britain. Around 150 people descended on the Port of Dover last week, many wearing face coverings. In Portsmouth, hundreds more were involved in protests after migrants arrived from France. Some of our police officers were injured and civilian vehicles were damaged.
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What exactly does frightening ordinary people achieve? We live in a democracy and we have freedom of speech. You can protest peacefully, you can write to your MP, you can campaign, you can stand for election yourself. And here’s a mad idea – you can actually vote for a political party promising to stop the boats if immigration is the issue you care about most. That’s how democracy works.
What you don’t do is dress like a Poundland paramilitary group and start scaring your fellow citizens. I can’t stand the Just Stop Oil mob. I’ve written enough about protesters gluing themselves to roads and bringing London to a standstill to make that perfectly clear, but at least most of them have the courage to show their faces. If you’re so proud of what you’re doing, why are you hiding?
And I find targeting RNLI volunteers particularly disgusting. These are people who save lives at sea. You can despise our immigration system while still understanding that you don’t leave human beings to drown in the English Channel – both things can be true.
Britons have every right to be angry about illegal migration. In the year to June 2026, 33,374 people arrived by small boat. That’s still an enormous number, but here’s the bit some people won’t want to hear – it was actually down 23 per cent on the previous year. Government figures also say crossings so far in 2026 are down by more than 43 per cent compared with last year. That’s progress, not victory, but progress.
Returns of people who arrived by small boat are rising too with 3,310 returned in the year to June, up 35 per cent. I still want our borders secured, and I still want people with no right to remain here removed. But we cannot complain that people entering Britain don’t respect our laws while simultaneously deciding that we don’t have to respect them either.
Keep Christianity Sacred
I don’t want to see a Christian place of worship used for degeneracy. A cathedral should feel sacred, not like somewhere you stumble into at 2am after losing your mates in Fabric. But the awkward truth is St Paul’s hosting music is nothing new.
Concerts have taken place inside the cathedral since at least the 1950s, and Fabric itself has already staged contemporary performances there. So why has the announcement of a four-year partnership between St Paul’s and the famous London nightclub suddenly caused such outrage? Under the deal, running from now until 2030, Fabric becomes St Paul’s exclusive partner for contemporary music events. The cathedral says it wants to attract new audiences and make use of its extraordinary acoustics.
To be fair, we’re not talking about 3,000 ravers necking vodka Red Bulls beside Nelson’s tomb. The concerts will be seated and minimally amplified, while previous Fabric events at St Paul’s banned alcohol and food and operated under strict rules. Still, it doesn’t sit right with me. Perhaps some of the outrage is because Sadiq Khan enthusiastically promoted the partnership and plenty of people simply don’t like him. But I wonder whether something deeper is happening. Are Britons becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Christianity being treated as neither culturally important nor particularly sacred?
I’m all for getting young people into church, but churches shouldn’t have to pretend to be nightclubs to achieve it. Young people already have nightclubs, yet what they increasingly lack are places that actually feel sacred.
Make Britain Great Again
Chancellor John Healey is setting out plans to push more investment and economic power into Britain’s city regions, including £150million aimed at innovative companies in northern England. It sounds good, but genuine levelling up shouldn’t mean building miniature versions of London everywhere else. For too long, regeneration has seemingly meant throwing up shiny city-centre apartment blocks, opening another coffee shop and constructing generic glass offices before declaring an area transformed.
Manchester ain’t Birmingham, and Birmingham ain’t Newcastle or Leeds. These cities have different histories, skills, industries and economic strengths, and investment should recognise that. Manufacturing, engineering, technology, energy and homegrown regional businesses can create thousands of well-paid jobs without desperately trying to replicate the capital.
And perhaps Whitehall could accept something else – people who actually live and work in these places might understand their economies better than civil servants sitting in London. Give local leaders the money and power to build on what their regions already do well and watch them be successful in their own way.
My American Makes Me Realise I’m British
I never realised quite how British I was until I married an American. Suddenly, all our strange little national quirks became glaringly obvious. We say “take care”; Americans enthusiastically declare, “Have a nice day!” We apologise when somebody else bumps into us. We say “You alright?” instead of hello.
And don’t get my wife started on our obsession with orderly queuing. Brits will tolerate almost anything, but jump a queue and you’ve made an enemy for life – ask Holly Willoughby.
Our biggest cultural battle, though, is tipping. I refuse to tip someone for handing me a coffee, which horrifies my wife. And in restaurants, 14 per cent is my absolute ceiling. She thinks I’m tight – I think Americans have lost the plot. Either way, the special relationship survives.