It’s funny what stays with you. When I was 12, I appeared in a stage version of a WW Jacobs short story called The Monkey’s Paw. It was first published in 1902, so spoiler alerts are probably unnecessary.
Briefly, the eponymous paw bestows three wishes upon the holder, with the caveat that they will be granted in circumstances that will fill the wisher with unbearable regret. The father of the house sceptically wishes for £200; the following day an emissary arrives from his son’s workplace to reveal that he has died in an industrial accident and the company will pay compensation of… £200.
The story ends with the son’s mutilated corpse knocking at the door of the family home as his parents, having wished their son back to life, rush to expend their final wish on returning him to his grave. The memory haunts me still.
When Keir Starmer wished for an end to the ballooning immigration figures that followed Brexit and inevitably dominated political discourse in the country he had recently begun to govern, he appears to have done so on a monkey’s paw. It remains remarkably under-reported but, due to policies both inherited and introduced, his wish has come true in spectacular fashion. In 2023, net migration peaked at 944,000. In 2025, it fell to 171,000.
