Missing

According to the Immigration minister Des Browne, the thousands of Eastern Europeans from new EU accession countries, who were apparently about to engulf our island on 1 May, have almost all decided to stay at home

It's perhaps the greatest no-show since Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction failed to materialise. According to the Immigration minister Des Browne, the thousands of Eastern Europeans from new EU accession countries, who were apparently about to engulf our island on 1 May, have almost all decided to stay at home. The exodus was obviously cancelled. It would be nice to think that the newspapers and politicians who delighted in propagating such tales before 1 May are now frantically trying to work out how they got it so wrong. Sadly, they are more likely to be looking for new scare stories with which to frighten the public. Xenophobes never let the facts, or the numbers it seems, get in the way.