If immigration is a "key" issue in this election, as politicians and the media keep telling us, it's only because they choose to make it one.

    It's happening both sides of the Channel, in fact, with far-right parties aiming to harvest votes using the politics of blame, just because neither they, nor any of the mainstream parties, have the faintest clue what to do about a degenerating economic and social system which is in near-permanent crisis, world-wide.

    So they point a finger at "the other", the foreigner, the immigrant, treating us all as fools. When it's quite obvious that "migrants" couldnt possibly have any hand in the horrific conditions we see in A&E departments in NHS hospitals - as shown in Channel 4's Dispatches this week. Nor the appalling crisis of elderly care (which was separated from the NHS and privatised under Tory and Labour in the 1980s and 1990s); nor the decades-long failure of successive governments to build social housing or even to control rents, etc., etc...! Yes, while on the contrary, migrants are largely responsible for keeping public services going, as they always have been, ever since generation Windrush arrived here in the 1950s.

    We're told that this year - a "record" number of "illegal migrants" crossed the Channel - but so far it's just 12,901 people (since 2018, only 127,220, yes, over 6 years!)... So, is this a lot?

    Let's see: even /egal migration this year, which Labour, Tory and Reform taunt each other about, at around 700,000 (including 378,000 students and dependents) was still not enough to fill the current, crying, 262,000 vacancies in the NHS and social care (110,000 and 152,000 respectively)!

    And by the way, neither has immigration been enough to stop the decline in the population due to falling fertility rates, either! The British population doesn't reproduce itself anymore. It's in decline. The fertility rate had already fallen from 4.7 in 1960 to 2.3 in 2021 "barely above replacement". Today it's even worse, with only 1.6 babies replacing every 2 adults!

    In short, this means that the entry of migrants into British society is vital for the population's very survival! But will politicians dare to mention this?

    No, they sow the divisive, mostly racist, nonsense of "too many immigrants" hoping that the working class will swallow it whole and will thus be weakened in its ability to wage collective fights to defend itself!

    But no, we know we need this new blood! Especially the tested-through-adversity blood of the so-called "illegals" who've no other way to get to this island except in rubber dinghies! Their attribute of courage will help us in the battles ahead, to change this society in the interests of the poor and the working class: since it will never change through votes in a ballot box - but only through the class struggle!

If the media still mentions the war on Gaza, it's only in the navel-gazing context of British elections. Commentators say Labour's stance on Palestine could cost it seats - due to what they call the "Muslim vote", since apparently, one has to be a Muslim to be shocked by the bloodbath in Gaza!

    The polls show that Labour lost a fifth of their votes in the local elections in May over the "Palestinian issue". So yes, Starmer back-tracked on his full-blooded support for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but his shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy can't help criticising the students' "violence and rioting" on university campuses.

    Never mind that talking about "violence and rioting" hardly describes the few tents pitched on British university grass lawns by students politicised by the slaughter in Gaza. In fact, a large section of the Israeli population has taken to the streets against Netanyahu's government, and not "peacefully"! This weekend, 150,000 protesters rallied in Tel-Aviv, against Netanyahu and "all the rats in the Knesset"!

    Netanyahu knows his days are numbered, but is determined to remain in position (and out of jail) as long as possible - and that depends on his far-right cabinet allies. So he is escalating the IDF attack on what remains of Gaza, sticking to his pledge to "annihilate Hamas". The Rafah crossing is burnt; on Sunday a UN aid facility was hit killing 8; on Monday the IDF hit a clinic in Gaza city, killing medical staff: so, "destroying Hamas"?

    On the West Bank, where 505 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, homes are being bulldozed as self-proclaimed "fascist" finance minister Smotrich accelerates new Zionist settlements. Just this week, after being shot twice and beaten up, a Palestinian, Mujahed Abadi, was tied to the bonnet of an Israeli military Jeep as it drove through Jenin.

    Sure, most politicians here call for a ceasefire, now that the damage is already done, and a "2-state solution" (Galloway's "Workers'" Party proposes a single, secular state). But not a single one offers the only viable perspective: for Israeli and Palestinian working classes and poor to come together against all nationalist/religious divisions. Yes, to build a collective future in the region across the artificial borders created and maintained by the imperialists - on the basis of the socialism that the best among them have always fought for.