The staggering hypocrisy of Allison Pearson

The Daily Telegraph’s Allison Pearson has long been very clear about where she stands on immigration to the UK: it must be stopped, no ifs, no buts.

“After justifiable public outcry, we are told that immigration is falling,” she wrote in June. “Yes, but only to levels that were historically very high.

“If anything will win them the 2029 general election, it is Reform UK’s promise to deliver net zero immigration, along with the deportation of foreign nationals who should never have been admitted in the first place.”

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In April she was writing about how “the elite can’t stand the truth about mass migration”, telling her readers how immigration “has caused rapid demographic change in Britain which threatens our national identity and social cohesion, particularly when Muslim communities are often highly segregated and do not always share democratic values nor Western views on equality between the sexes”.

Last year she was cheering on Reform’s pledge to scrap indefinite leave to remain while deporting hundreds of thousands of migrants, delighting in how there were apparently “heart attacks in Hampstead, conniptions in Camden and several thousand people in the Richmond area had to postpone their pilates lesson, so great was their distress at the news that some ghastly far right oiks want to put the British people first for a change”.

“A report last year from the not exactly far right Office for Budget Responsibility concluded that immigration is extremely costly – only a tiny number of incomers to our country contribute more than they consume,” she wrote.

“Legal immigration has spiralled out of control, and it is damaging the quality of life for British people… what Reform did this week was simply to say, ‘No more’. We can’t go on like this if we wish to survive, let alone thrive, as a nation. It was the most consequential policy announcement of my lifetime, I think, and it is urgently needed.”

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To be fair to Pearson, she has remained consistent. So what was her response this week, when she discovered that a friend’s son’s Argentine fiancée was having difficulties immigrating to Britain?

“A friend’s son has had an almighty struggle trying to get his Argentinian fiancée the right to remain in the UK where they hope to start a family,” she moaned on X. “If Josh was a foreign care worker he could pitch up here with six dependents no questions asked.”

Leaving aside that the second part of her post is a lie – new foreign care workers have been prevented from bringing spouses, partners or dependent children with them since March 2024 – might the hypocrisy have escaped poor Allison?