The completely unexpected result in the US presidential election would appear to be the result of avoiding the issue that bothers people everywhere: the huge influx of Muslims from the war-torn Muslim world to the West. I say this because of my soundings in Yass, would you believe.
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We are American allies and must hope that their choice of Donald Trump works out better than the incumbent Barack Obama, who has made a mess of the Middle East by withdrawing American support early. Now that the Russians have come in, things are working out better. The Kurds might well get the autonomy they want in Iraq, but Iran will in due course have the bomb.
In the meantime, the Americans are not running the show. There is no way of knowing how Trump will go but he must do better than Hillary Clinton, who is Secretary of State and who has not addressed the issue of immigration and would presumably have given the world a continuation of Barack Obama’s policies of pretending it isn’t there.
The polls had Clinton as favourite, but polls had the vote in Britain on EU membership as being to remain, when the result was to leave. It had everything to do with immigration, and specifically, Muslim immigration.
This is a no-no subject among the chattering classes everywhere, including our political leaders, who discuss the crisis in housing affordability in terms of supply when price is a factor of supply and demand. When demand outstrips supply, the price rises.
And is demand rising? Yes, it certainly is, from immigration, which is supposed to be 200,000 a year, but is probably greater.
And does that level of immigration add to the demand for housing? It must. The Australian’s Judith Sloan has made her newspaper the first to say so, recommending that the number should be halved.
I conducted my own polling in Yass, in the form of casual conversations with some 20 people. Their view was unanimous: cut back on all immigration and end Muslim immigration. Please do not write to the Tribune to say that 20 people do not make a summer, any more than does half a swallow, but it left me convinced Trump would win, as he did in rural America. I might have been among the first in the world, although I report my findings with all due diffidence.
But I would suggest that if someone had taken a look at the north of England the that result would have been less of a surprise.
And it should be noted that Trump wants to cut back on immigration, and especially on Muslim immigration, and Clinton did not and avoided the issue nobody wants to talk about. The result in the US is a signal. The voters are sick of pap. Trump’s election is a warning.
