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Both our economy and our public services would suffer without foreign nationals to prop them up, writes GB News' Senior Political Commentator

A little while back, I went to a comedy club where Romesh Ranganathan topped the bill. He was very funny.

It was not the first time we had been in the same room. When he was less famous, we did a TV newspaper review together in which we decided to make use of his comedy talents.

I played the straight man to feed him the lines for gags. But I don't remember many people laughing. Perhaps it was a role for which I’m not suited.

The warm-up act for his comedy club gig was an elderly Jewish comedian who made me very uncomfortable. He told a string of Jewish jokes which would not have raised eyebrows 50 years previously. But had I been telling them now, I would be accused of antisemitism. Which set me thinking. Is an antisemitic joke always unacceptable, or fine when told by a Jewish comedian? And should that give license to a gentile audience to laugh at it? Or is it the joke itself which is antisemitic no matter who is telling it?

When I was younger, pub jokes often began: “An Irishman, an Englishman and a Jew walked into a bar...” You don’t hear them now.

Skinheads no longer roam the streets looking for men of Pakistani origin to bash. And while there is much nastiness sloshing about on social media, surprisingly little of it is overtly racist. But I accept the observations of a middle-class white man such as me may not be the best litmus test of how much racism is still around.

And talking of middle-class white men brings me onto Richard Tice. Reform’s deputy leader was accused of racism for his new policy of denying foreign nationals social homes.

When I confronted him on GB News Tonight, I acknowledged this was not racist. I accused Reform instead of irrational xenophobia – a dislike or fear of foreigners.

This came a week after Reform’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick announced that EU citizens with settled status would no longer get benefits if he became Chancellor. It is as if all Britain’s ills can be solved by making foreign nationals living here as unwelcome as possible. Which is surely unrealistic.

Other political parties are not immune from this trend, with the Tories not far behind Reform and Labour floating a plan to make permission for indefinite leave to remain in this country retrospective.

Opinion polls suggest such policies are popular, but people should be careful what they wish for. Both our economy and our public services would suffer without foreign nationals to prop them up.

The 5.8 million EU citizens here pay £13billion in taxes every year and, according to Oxford Economics, the average European contributes £2,300 more than the average Brit.

It is true many of them are claiming Universal Credit under our reciprocal agreement with the EU, but 82 per cent of them are in work compared to only 75 per cent of British nationals. And the Government’s Migration Advisory Committee has found little evidence of that having a negative effect on the British workforce.

One in four care workers and one in five NHS staff are from overseas. Discouraging them from coming here has already meant 75,000 fewer over the last two years and the care sector now has 96,000 vacancies.

The contribution an average British-born citizen makes to the economy over a lifetime comes out as around zero because what they put in they also take out in education, healthcare and pensions.

We do not have to pay for the education of a migrant, and as they are by and large younger, they cost the NHS less.

It is not racist to wish to control our borders. But we should be mindful the xenophobia which is replacing it could have serious unforeseen consequences too.