WHAT a surprise! David Cameron has finally woken up to the fact that people are concerned about immigration. It’s Ukip, of course, which has provided the alarm call. Really, it’s disgraceful that all three main parties have for years contemptuously ignored the public’s disquiet about the numbers coming in – and we don’t actually know how many, since our borders are so porous.

Even the BBC, in a recent File on Four programme, expressed shock and dismay about this scandal.

Official figures say there are 250,000 more each year coming in than those leaving the country – that’s a medium sized city every 12 months. And the real numbers are likely to be much higher. The fact is, nobody knows. And that, frankly, is no way to run the country.

So Cameron says he is going to do something about it at last. His hypocrisy is blatant: if he were really concerned about immigration, he would have done something about it already.

And it’s not just the Tories who are running scared of Ukip. Labour’s Andy Burnham has belatedly woken up too. He says: “There is more we need to do to listen to people who are voting Ukip, particularly on immigration and I’d be the first to say that.” Except you’re not the first to say it, Andy – not by a long chalk.

Immigration has long been the elephant in the room that none of the main parties will admit is there. It’s not nice to suggest that the country is too full of foreigners.

The mere suggestion will get you called “xenophobic” and “racist.”

But the truth is that for years the public has been swindled and insulted by our leaders. Our politicians have now owned up to this.

Andrew Neather, a former advisor to Tony Blair, admitted that the huge increase in immigrants over the past decade was owing to a politically-motivated attempt by Labour to change the country: “To rub the Right’s noses in diversity.”

He added: “Labour’s relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to open up the UK to mass immigration” but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss their plan for fear that to do so would “alienate its core working class vote”.

Well, it’s not only the working class who are alienated by this swindle.

People in all walks of life are concerned but despair of ever seeing anything done about it. Now Mr Cameron says it’s not acceptable for immigrants to come here, claim benefits and then send the money back to their relatives oversees.

Yes, most of us deplore such fraud. But that’s not our main concern.

From every section of society we hear expressions of anxiety because the character of our nation is being radically changed by uncontrolled immigration.

This, too, will get you pilloried as a racist and a xenophobe. But the country does – or did – have a recognisable character and it’s natural that most of us would like to see this character preserved.

It’s too late. Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has said that there are now many “no-go areas” in Britain for indigenous whites. The result of unrestricted immigration over many years has produced a revolutionary change. One official statistic will demonstrate this fact: the Department of Education says we need another 500,000 primary school places – “because there’s a baby boom”. Not among indigenous white people there isn’t: families in this sector are barely producing the two children required to replicate themselves. But the birth-rate among Muslims is ten times higher.

This is a fact. But are we allowed even to mention it?