Importing Gazans to Gateshead. What could possibly go wrong? How long have you got? - Colin Brazier

Well, if a week is a long time in politics, a year is an eternity. By this week, the wheels had come off the Starmer charabanc. Not just the wheels, but the exhaust, all four doors, even the fluffy dice. No more psychodramas, Anna? Anyone watching the Labour revolts on welfare was witnessing a governing party having a full-scale nervous breakdown.

And worse, for all the rows about disability payments that filled the airwaves, it wasn’t even the story that showed the extent of Labour’s worsening mental stability.

That came in the form of a letter, signed by dozens of Labour MPs, demanding a ‘Gaza Family Scheme’, to "reunite [Palestinians] with their loved ones in the UK until it is safe to return”.

What could possibly go wrong?

The letter, sent to the Prime Minister and Home Secretary, goes on to say: "Just as the UK opened its doors to those fleeing persecution in Ukraine and Hong Kong, we believe that the same generosity should be extended to Palestinian families.”

Do you see the flaw in their analysis?

To your average witless leftie, conflating the causes of Hong Kong Chinese and Ukrainians with those of Palestinians in Gaza seems entirely reasonable. Aren’t they all being persecuted?

But let’s ponder things for a moment. First, the Hong Kongers who’ve been invited here, almost always highly educated and law-abiding, do not want to live in a State increasingly bossed by the Chinese Communist Party.

Under British rule, Hong Kong was a colony which, through laws, education and governance, produced a population well-disposed to the UK, apt to assimilate in the UK and owed a historic debt to the UK.

Palestinians in Gaza, by contrast, have not shown the same appetite to embrace Western norms. Take the example of Denmark, a country (if ever there was one) that has been mugged by the realities of migration and now takes a deeply sceptical view of its ‘benefits’.

In the early 1990s, the Danish government came under pressure from left-wing MPs to admit refugees from Gaza. A little over 300 were resettled there. No fewer than 71 of them went on to have criminal records that resulted in a prison sentence.

What about Ukraine? Didn’t we allow thousands of Ukrainians to escape the bombs by moving to Britain? Leaving aside the obvious point that Ukrainians, for a host of reasons, are more likely to be a net gain for social cohesion, a key difference is that most of them will return to Ukraine when the war is over. Would Palestinians? Far less likely.

More importantly, look at how countries bordering Ukraine welcomed millions of Ukrainians into their homes. Ask yourself why Gaza’s Muslim neighbours, while very publicly indignant about the plight of Palestinians, are privately very reluctant to admit them.

Look at the giant wall built by Egypt to keep Palestinians out. Look at the reaction of Jordan and Lebanon, where Palestinians have been the cause of violent discord.

I made this point in a tweet this week that was viewed by a quarter of a million people. One respondent wrote: “They were expelled from Kuwait, caused trouble in Egypt, tried to cause a civil war in Jordan, succeeded in causing one in Lebanon. Even Gaddafi tried to get rid of them. There's a reason they're not welcome across the region.”

Because the brute truth is that Gaza has become a place which produces people bred to hate Israelis, where children read about the evils of Jewry in school, and parade through town squares wearing fake suicide vests. And, yes, where a majority - 57 per cent according to one survey - believe that the animalistic attacks against Jews on October 7th were defensible.

But what about the brave Gazans who reject Hamas? Couldn’t we root them out and help them move to safety? In an ideal world, maybe. But the world we live in isn’t like that.

The world we live in has a Home Office which can’t differentiate between a deceitful migrant who has burned his ID papers and pretends to be a child to get a soft ride through the asylum system, or masquerades as a Christian, or a homosexual, in order to game the system. In reality, it would be impossible to screen out the radicals from the legitimate refugees.

And once here, more would come. The initial influx might be for humanitarian reasons, but once established, it would become a magnet for the beginnings of a diaspora.

What, then, will happen to the letter written by Labour MPs (and all four Green MPs and the inevitable Church of England bishop)? Will we see Gazans in Gateshead, Palestinians in Paisley and Hamas sympathisers in Halifax before the year is out?

Unlikely. The British people have collectively woken up to several harsh realities of late. Many are now unwilling to view all nationalities bound for Britain in the same light. They know there is a world of difference between an ambitious, hard-working, Anglo-centric Indian, Nigerian or Filipino, who wants to come here and, say, a Somalian, Pakistani or Afghan, whose cultural baggage is inimical to the mores of the host nation.

The great lie that sits at the heart of the multicultural dogma - that all migrants are the same - has been proved to be utterly bogus.

So while there might be sympathy, on a human level, for any people living through war, the British people are increasingly reluctant to open the door to all-comers.

A few nationalities are massively over-represented when it comes to demand for social housing and benefits, as well as the supply of sex crimes and terrorism.

Increasingly, British people, when asked if they want to welcome in either Hong Kong Chinese, Ukrainians or Gazans, are not willing to listen to sanctimonious charity workers, NGO’s or Labour MPs. They are ready to trust the evidence of their own eyes.