Rising Tory's anti-migrant talk is straight out the 1930s

It doesn’t take much these days to be marked out as a “rising star” in the Conservative Party, or what remains of it. But in recent weeks, the hitherto unknown MP for the Weald of Kent, Katie Lam, has surged from the distant shadows into the spotlight, chiefly because of her robust views on immigration.

- ALAN RUSBRIDGER

Given all that is going on in the world today, she seems slightly obsessed with the issue. Most notably, she gave an interview to The Sunday Times in which she spoke menacingly of “a large number of people in this country who came here legally, but in effect shouldn’t have been able to do so. It’s not the fault of the individuals who came here; they just shouldn’t have been able to do so. They will also need to go home.”

The reporter did not press her on who these people are, how many “a large number” is, and where their real “home” might be. But she was confident that, once this group had been forcibly repatriated, “what that will leave is a mostly, but not entirely, culturally coherent group of people”. The reporter did not ask her to explain what that meant. But she was clear about where she stood: “We don’t owe anybody access to our country other than people that we choose for our own benefit.”

She had written something similar in The Telegraph last month: “Britain,” she argued, “does not exist simply to offer those from abroad a better life, and the point of the British state isn’t to take care of global welfare. Its primary purpose - indeed, its only purpose - is to advance and protect the interests of the British people.”

And here she is again, last month, in a Westminster Hall debate, arguing that the UK has no responsibility to foreigners, only to British people: “It is our sacred duty to put them first, and to act in their interests and their interests alone.”

Such talk plays well to the modern Tory party, and perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that, when George Osborne recently dropped in on vice-president JD Vance on his Cotswolds holiday, he took with him the 34-year-old Lam. They seem like they could be soulmates.

Now let me introduce you to Katie Lam’s ancestors, and the reason why Lam lives in the UK and is able to represent the good people of Kent.