Paddington came from Peru, made friends with his fellow migrant Mr Gruber and became a much-loved part of British life.
By contrast, in the words of Ian Jack behind the London Review of Books paywall:
The three young men – born in 1970 or 1971 – had certain similarities in their personal histories. Hannan and Carswell spent their childhoods in faraway, politically disturbed countries as the children of British expatriates: Hannan’s family had a poultry farm in Peru, while Carswell’s parents were doctors in Uganda. Hannan and Reckless boarded at Marlborough before Oxford. Carswell went to Charterhouse before UEA.
To see them as a social ‘type’ might be stretching it; nevertheless they share a flashy certitude and know-all bumptiousness that might stem from their ambition, as outsiders in the muted social codes of England’s ancient universities and more expensive public schools, to make their mark.
Hannan, after all, was the Vote Leave campaigner who stood on a desk and recited the St Crispin’s Day speech to his colleagues when the news came through of Leave’s victory, and perhaps to do that it helps to have been raised as a little Briton in Peru.Whatever the truth of that, Hannan appears determined to make life less comfortable for Mr Gruber.
And if Mr and Mrs Brown took Paddington in today they could be imprisoned for 14 years.
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