I remember a very cross Pole on the Today programme (BBC flagship current affairs prog) complaining bitterly that the Poles and other eastern Europeans were being cast as immigration scape goats.

His point was that, even at its peak, Eastern European immigration never approached in numbers the steady inflow from Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

Mainstream centre left media was suddenly able to run stories about the impact of immigration because they could talk about white immigrants.

The overwhelming source of immigrants to the UK was, and is, Africa and the subcontinent.