Britain is in desperate need of workers. So why is it trying to keep them out? | Simon Jenkins

While ministers panic about small boats crossing the Channel, the economy is struggling without people to pick fruit or staff hotels

Nothing makes sense. Along the east coast of England, British employers scan the horizon. They are desperate for any migrant workers whom Boris Johnson will bless with visas to pick fruit, kill turkeys, staff hotels or care for elderly people. At the same time along the south coast British politicians howl with horror at boatloads of just such people as they come ashore, desperate to offer their services. Brexit is a shamble of hypocrisies.

Immigration materially affects very few Britons. It is more a feature of the politics of xenophobia. The 24,000 asylum seekers who have crossed the Channel so far this year are presented by eager Tories as presaging a new Viking horde or a Norman conquest. There is something ominous in people arriving on beaches, rather than coming through Terminal 5.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist