Back in 2014, Nigel Farage told us he felt "awkward" taking a train through South London.

"It wasn't until after we got past Grove Park that I could actually hear English being audibly spoken in the carriage," he said. "This country in a short space of time has frankly become unrecognisable."

Fast forward 9 years and he's in the I'm A Celebrity Jungle telling YouTuber Nella Rose people in South London adore him, while at home the news is all about the highest immigration levels since humans wandered across the land bridge from Europe 850,000 years ago.

But in 2014, David Cameron was making up foreign policy, Russia was shooting down planes in Ukraine, and Prince Andrew was an alleged sex pest. So much has changed.

I mean this happens now (
Image:
ITV)

Two years after that, Britain went to the polls in a referendum on leaving the European Union, narrowly won by the Brexit camp which staked its claims on immigration being too high and Boris Johnson being right.

At the time, net migration was "too high" at 333,000 a year. After 4 years of wrangling and 2 Prime Ministers, net migration went down a bit to 212,000, probably because who'd want to go to a country that doesn't know what it's doing. We Brexited in 2020, introduced a points-based immigration system of the kind Nigel had been badgering for, and last year net migration was 745,000.

Twice the levels that caused Brexit, and all because we "took back control" of our borders and gave it to the chaotic, self-destructive acolytes attracted to the heat and light of the raging skip fire which was Boris.

If you think the system they designed is responsible for high immigration, then it is Brexit that gave them the power to cock up on such an epic scale.

If they can't tidy their hair are they really going to tidy up the rules? (
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Getty Images)

Before Brexit, about 6% of NHS staff were from Asia and Africa. Today, it's 12%.

While 10% of doctors were from the EU in 2016, today it's 8%. The proportion of Asian and African staff has almost doubled in the same period.

It's not clear-cut - there's a further 300,000 staff in the NHS now, and data collection has changed which may have skewed the figures. But without the NHS our economy ceases to exist, along with many of our citizens, so those with medical qualifications get a migrant visa under the new system. The same goes for anyone working in social care, where wages are worse and the funding utterly dire.

And if they come from Nigeria instead of the Netherlands, it's a longer and more expensive trip home. The standard of living for their relatives is in all likelihood significantly lower than it would be in Europe. Of course they bring their families with them - if they didn't, they would be much less likely to come, and you'd be emptying your own potty.

Without high-skilled migrants, twice as many women would die as a result of childbirth (
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Getty Images)

Before Brexit, EU students could pay the same £9,250 tuition fees as a British citizen and study at any of our universities. In 2016, 6% student places were filled by EU citizens, and 13% from the rest of the world.

After Brexit, the EU students had to pay the same as other foreign nationals, and fees jumped to as much as £38,000. As a result the number of EU students has halved, while the number of students from elsewhere has jumped - China for example has gone from 107,000 students in 2017 to 151,000 in 2022.

Universities turned into corporations by the Tories have to chase the money, so suck up as many foreign nationals as possible to stay solvent, because those same Tories froze tuition fees, which are now worth two-thirds of what they were worth thanks to inflation.

It was those same Tories who, thanks to Brexit, have agreed or are negotiating world-beating trade deals with Pakistan, India, Vietnam, African and Caribbean countries. And each and every one of them includes clauses about guaranteed visas for work and study for their citizens.

Beware, geniuses at work (
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UK PARLIAMENT/AFP via Getty Imag)

If you think we have too many foreign students, or too many foreign health and social care staff, it is Brexit that gift-wrapped them for you.

The fact many people - Labour and Tory voters, migrant populations and not - think immigration is too high is why our Brexit-backing Prime Minister, his Brexit-backing Cabinet, and his leadership rivals including Brexit backer Kemi Badenoch and former Brexit minister Suella Braverman are all having a bit of a moment.

They're running around, squawking and flapping about how there's too many immigrants, and blaming each other for not fixing something which cannot be fixed. If you Brexit, my dears, you need to get your migrants from somewhere else, and they will be supplemented by those you are forced to accept by the trade deals you've just let Liz Truss negotiate.

The latest migration figures are about one-third high-skilled migrants who got enough points, one-third their families, and one-third people who've been approved for asylum and humanitarian reasons. They came because they were Ukrainian, Afghani, Syrian, and we invited them; they came because sea levels are rising, fundamentalism is spreading, and states are failing due to climate change.

And the Tory plan to deal with it all is a barge for 500 people, a planeload or two to Rwanda, and they won't make you buy a new car. Brexit gave us four, ever-more incompetent governments that have thoroughly potholed every public service, every last bit of sanity the country had left. The country we used to be is frankly unrecognisable. Because of Brexit, Esther McVey is now in charge of common sense! Honestly, you might as well ask a chicken to fix it.

Now that we're a sovereign nation, we can't blame anyone else for this. It's not Europe's fault this time. It's ours - either because you voted for something you were warned would never work, or because you didn't vote in big enough numbers for something that you knew did work.

If Nigel makes it out of the jungle, and ever deigns to ride a train through South London again, he should still feel awkward. Not because he'd be surrounded by high-skilled brown people speaking more than one language, and not even because none of them can speak bats*** as fluently as he.

Just awkward because he fed us an absolute pig's testicle of a lie, and now everyone except him is having to chew on it..