Pelle Neroth Taylor on Clueless Philippe Legrain

Anglo-Swedish journalist Pelle Neroth Taylor writes this guest post.


Here’s an article from Legrain, a Franco-Estonian Englishman.


He starts with what appears to be a recurring argument for him, that the experience of countries with Russian immigrants can be generalized to boat people, using the example of two Nobel-prize winning Russian-English physicists.


We also learn that far from crowded, England is ripe for development.

Nor is Britain “full up”. Even in England only 11% of the surface area is lived on. The problem is planning restrictions that excessively restrict development, driving up residential land prices to the benefit of large landowners and at the expense of everyone else.

So what we need to do is transform this:

into this:

Then we’ll all become rich and start winning a bunch of Nobel Prizes in physics. Also, such transformation will only harm “rich landowners” who are well known to oppose mass immigration, while the development of the 89% of England not currently paved over will benefit “everyone else.”