Welcome to Britain, offend at your leisure

THIS IS HOW I SEE IT

- JJ Anisiobi

HERE is a strange new industry thriving in modern Britain: explaining away the obvious. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the national gymnastics routine performed every time the subject of foreign nationals committing crime is raised.

Cue the caveats, the context, the throat-clearing, the urgent insistence that noticing a problem is somehow worse than the problem itself.

So let's start with the facts. New research from the Centre for Migration Control shows that in 2024/25 there were 172,889 arrests of foreign nationals recorded by police forces across England and Wales.

That's 473 arrests a day, nearly 20 an hour, or one arrest every 183 seconds. By the time you've finished reading this column, someone else will have been nicked.