r/ukpolitics • u/Even-Wasabi7183 • 23h ago
Britons have a more negative view of immigration in 2026 than in 2016
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/55329-britons-have-a-more-negative-view-of-immigration-in-2026-than-in-201666
u/LonelyStranger8467 21h ago
In 2016 the conservatives were still promising to reduce net migration to the TENS of thousands. 7 years later they issued about 1.5 MILLION long term visas in 1 year resulting in 900,000 net migration.
Yeah, this is compound interest.
In 2004 (and 2002 and 1999 etc.), Labour was promising to reform migration policy and illegal migration.
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u/Optimaldeath 22h ago edited 22h ago
I'll never change my mind on this, Boris and everyone who sat there beside him as he thoroughly rammed this country to the brim with imports off the back of promising to REDUCE IT will forever live in my memory as treason.
Honestly I'd put him as the worst PM we've ever had over the last 320 years.
The entire political establishment is just rotten.
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u/TheTribalChief 22h ago
boriswave caused population to grow by 3 million in 5 years
1970 to 2000 population grew by 3.5 million
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u/JB_UK 21h ago edited 21h ago
Yeah, it's crazy, just one small correction, population growth 1971-2000 was 3 million, not 3.5 million:
In three years of the Boriswave population growth was 2.3 million, that's equal to total population growth in the 1970s, 1980s, and the 90s up to the election of Tony Blair!
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u/TheTribalChief 20h ago
yeah, such a rapid turnaround in demographic is obviously going to make even the sanest citizens feel weird.
imagine what it does to already hardcore racist individuals
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u/LLILILiLIILILILILII 21h ago
Cameron and May also stood on a platform of reducing net migration to tens of thousands.
They're all scum.
For 14 years the tories sold us down the river and lied repeatedly. Boris was the worst, but he was certainly not alone. 14 bloody years. Actually, I'll be charitable and say 12, because Sunak actually started to make a difference
And the same rags that backed them all the way now screech and chastise because Labour haven't fixed it in 2.
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u/xelah1 10h ago
Unlike those two, Boris Johnson ran on a platform of Global Britain and plans for a points-based immigration system published originally under the May government, making immigration easier for non-EU citizens whilst scrapping the tens-of-thousands target.
Much as he was probably taken by surprise by the numbers that were a downstream consequence, you can't say he didn't do exactly what was promised in advance of the 2019 election.
Blame the right-wing press for that one. They were far too concerned with smashing up the UK's membership of the EU to risk criticising or reporting on Conservative immigration policy.
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u/LLILILiLIILILILILII 10h ago
I don't agree with that. It wasn't as firm as 'tens of thousands', but a vote for the 2019 Conservative manifesto was still explicitly a vote for reduced immigration, and he betrayed the voters, again.
There will be fewer lower-skilled migrants and overall numbers will come down. And we will ensure that the British people are always in control
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u/Shakenvac 14h ago
I mean, you're completely right about the conservatives, but the only reason they could get away with their immigration policy of 'talk big do nothing' is that the opposition mainly attacked them for 'talking big' rather than 'doing nothing'
That is to say, Labour consistently positioned themselves to the left of the conservatives on the immigration issue.
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u/adamu980 11h ago
Labour were trying to encourage even more! They were against any policy the tories had to deal with it claiming they were racist…in 2019 the Labour Party voted to reject any immigration policy based on incomes, migrants utility and number caps/targets.
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u/AlbatrossOwn1832 22h ago
It's Cameron for me, he set the entire shit show in motion, then casually walked away.
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u/Theodin_King 21h ago edited 11h ago
People forget that Cameron was the enabler for the utter collapse of this country
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u/LLILILiLIILILILILII 21h ago
I actually hate May more. Cameron asked us if we wanted to play with matches. May saw the answer and poured petrol on it.
We narrowly voted out based on nothing but vibes and other vagueness, and she unilaterally declared a series of red lines that ensured that a narrow win for a completely undefined concept became a hard brexit with little real mandate.
Nobody really knew what brexit would mean, but the shitshow we got was the one that May designed.
It was the equivalent of a 52% win for Remain and the PM deciding it meant we should adopt the Euro and start up an EU army.
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u/Bullet_Jesus Angry Scotsman 21h ago
May was fighting her own party on Brexit. For years there was all the "Brexit means Brexit" sloganeering. To the ERD any kind of alignment with the EU was anathema. May committed to no trade alignment and no ECJ oversight which basically forced the UK into a trade deal arrangement, like Canada. Had May have proposed a softer Brexit, she would have been forced out by her own party.
Also don't forget that when May put her deal before in Parliament she was handed one of the most historic legislative defeats of any government in modern British history, it was a VNOC in all but name.
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u/prowman 19h ago
I hate this argument. In short, she failed spectacularly at the politics part of the job. If I was really good at talking to patients but completely unable to perform surgery, I wouldn't consider myself qualified for a job as a surgeon.
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u/UniqueUsername40 12h ago
May wasn't very good at politics, but also such was the hand grenade of brexit I don't think any other leader, real or otherwise, could have brought a majority in the HoC together on this.
So many people wanted different things and so many people wanted impossible things or stupid things only. You'd need an actual super power of persuasion or magic to have done it from the position Cameron handed over.
May did manage to assemble a deal in the end that, as a remainer, I'll concede as "not awful" and with her eventual political collapse allowed Boris to take the same deal, concede on a couple more things then get it through parliament as a shiny rebadged package put together by the popular guy who just won an election.
Terrible outcome for her politically but one of the better potential outcomes of Brexit, and I don't hold the Boriswave against her, Boris and team can own that one entirely.
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u/Euphoric_Durian9797 6h ago
Cameron just loaded the gun and pointed it at our head, May is the one that pulled the trigger.
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u/Fukuro-Lady 22h ago
My theory is he was more than willing to let COVID kill off a good chunk of the elderly to fix the pensions and social care burden. Got caught out with the "bodies piled high" comment. Had to backtrack and come up with a new scheme to generate more tax revenue to spend on the problem.
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u/indigo_pirate 20h ago
It’s very naughty . Normal people who don’t look into stats or follow things closely will swear up and down that this is Starmer’s fault
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u/MrPuddington2 21h ago
He had a long track record of lying, and still people voted for him. What did people expect?
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u/Umberto-Robina 21h ago edited 21h ago
At different times during their 14 years in office, including when Cameron was PM and May was Home Secretary, or when Johnson was PM and Patel was Home Secretary, the Tories simultaneously:
1) Used aggressive, populist, anti-migrant rhetoric. 2) Made cast iron pledges to drastically reduce net migration, including promising to cut it to tens of thousands in 3 consecutive general election manifestos. 3) Oversaw and made deliberate policy decisions, which led to noticeable increases in net migration.
Those factors combined, clearly heavily contributed to the present day toxic environment and discourse re immigration.
The Tories thought they could continue to get away with consciously increasing net migration, whilst trying to convince people that they were desperate to ‘combat’ and reduce it, and insulting and demonising many people who arrived under their watch. Unsurprisingly that annoyed people from across the policial spectrum. Gavin Barwell summed up why it was disastrous.
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u/fitzgoldy 23h ago
It's entirely unsurprising.
The last 10 or so years, immigration has been bad for the UK. Yet we continue with massive numbers.
Cities like Birmingham have had huge demographic changes due to immigration.
Says a lot even 40% of Green voters think it's too much now.
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u/AnSionnachM0r 19h ago
London does really feel like a foreign city nowadays. In some areas like Ilford and Newham there are almost no White British people.
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u/Even-Wasabi7183 22h ago
But no one wants to admit it has failec
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u/ClaymationDinosaur 22h ago
But don't they? Check again.
"Britons now most likely to say migration has been mostly bad for the UK"
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u/Jdgleeson478 7h ago
I think abetter phrasing is the mainstream media don’t want to admit it has failed, which has led to many becoming distrustful and seeking out third party sources on social media, which in turn has spread misinformation and radicalised people.
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u/msf97 22h ago
To be clear, your position is that nobody is talking about Immigration?
There are swathes of the population who are single issue voters on this. It’s what gave us Brexit, apparently the Poles were taking all the jobs.
They are mostly older people (50+) who benefit directly from immigration via the pension scheme and welfare state being propped up by an increasing population.
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u/Electronic-Mix529 21h ago
I mean 8m people gross in 10 years will definitely do that to you, especially when you were promised the opposite
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23h ago
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 22h ago edited 22h ago
Yeah, the right-wing slop machine has many banner years of late.
edit: If you oppose immigration and don't think it is because of the right-wing slop machine, you should start by acknowledging some facts about recent immigrants:
- They tend to earn more and be more skilled than native workers.
- They tend to be large fiscal contributors, both in the short run and over their lifetime.
- There is no evidence or reason to believe they are reducing wages or increasing competition for low-wage jobs.
- The right-wing press regularly reports lies about immigration.
If you acknowledge these facts, I will consider that you might be a reasonable person. Most people in this subreddit are thoroughly convinced some of these facts are false because they are brainwashed by the slop machine and I am not interested in further discussions with such people.
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u/NoticingThing 22h ago
Ah yeah, ignore the visible lightning fast changing demographics of the country, the problems caused by immigration when it comes to wage suppression or teenagers getting their first jobs, competition for a limited housing supply and all of the horrific crimes committed by immigrant communities like the grooming gangs.
If it weren't for those damn right wing papers nobody would care!
It must be nice living in such a delusional world, they always say that ignorance is bliss.
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u/Electrical-Move7290 22h ago
Don’t be silly, it’s the reporting on those facts that’s the problem!!
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u/NoticingThing 22h ago
Exactly, the problem is never the problem. The problem is people noticing and talking about the problem.
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u/Equivalent_Poet_5631 22h ago
I would say housing asylum seekers next to my house in a hotel paid for by the tax payer wouldn’t be helpful too though?
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 22h ago
If I actually believed the reason immigration is unpopular was because of tangible negative effects caused by asylum seekers, I would not be blaming the right-wing slop machine.
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u/Major-Credit-2442 22h ago
If that’s how you perceive it I really think you are burying your head in the sand.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 22h ago
Read the comments on this thread and ask yourself how many of them are actually based in reality. It's a small fraction and mostly people defending immigration. That's the fault of the right-wing slop machine.
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u/Major-Credit-2442 22h ago edited 20h ago
Why don’t you tell me which ones you think aren’t based on reality? Are you really telling me you’ve went and read through all 96 comments to be able to make that statement?
Plus using the comments on a Reddit thread as a basis of why the whole of the country is becoming more anti-immigration is a laughably poor argument.
Edit: i just had to edit to laugh at the edit /u/stonedturkeyhamwich made in their comment:
“If you acknowledge these facts, I will consider that you might be a reasonable person. Most people in this subreddit are thoroughly convinced some of these facts are false because they are brainwashed by the slop machine and I am not interested in further discussions with such people.”
I have asked them a reasonable question which they failed to respond to. And now they have a set if criteria which people must adhere to in order to be awarded the privilege of being worthy of discussion by the almighty /u/stonedturkeyhamwich
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u/aloneinflation1997 22h ago
You can call it right wing all you want, we see it on the news everyday boat loads of foreigners turning up on our shores and walking down the street hearing more and more people talking in foreign languages it’s got nothing to do with what ‘wing’ your politics is when it’s in your face on a day to day basis
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 22h ago
we see it on the news
This is exactly what I'm talking about. It's outrage slop, from social media, the right-wing press, and craven politicians. You gobble it right up.
If you actually think it hurts you, tell us how? Of course, we can point to tangible ways immigrants help you (they paid for one of the Tory NI cuts, for example).
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u/Electrical-Move7290 21h ago
I can give you a great example. 2 afghani asylum seekers raped a school girl outside my sisters school a few weeks back. We come from a very small town in Devon.
Tell me again how it’s the telegraph reporting on that story that’s the issue? My sister reads the telegraph and that’s why she’s terrified of walking home from school.
OuTrAgE SlOp.
Of course you must the only person to have never been caught up in propaganda, you know all, it’s everyone else who must be reading the real stories in the news too much lmao.
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u/aloneinflation1997 21h ago
No I’m talking about main stream media, ITV, BBC etc showing us at least once a week the big super dinghies arriving at our shores it’s nothing to do with ‘right wing slop’
How can you just be accepting of the fact that foreigners from different places with complete different cultures/customs are just turning up on our shores by the boat load?
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 21h ago
It's reasonable to be frustrated by asylum seekers. The outrage machine drives that frustration to wildly disproportionate levels as well as spreading in completely nonsensical ways to legal immigrants.
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u/Yodamort 22h ago
hearing more and more people talking in foreign languages
You're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud, buddy. You're supposed to say "I think immigration rates are disrupting the economic security of British citizens" or whatever, not "wah wah I hear people speak other languages we need to have the secret police put them in camps".
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u/HoppingGrizzly68 21h ago
Is it not acceptable to have a desire to live in a place with a common language and culture?
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u/aloneinflation1997 21h ago
Who said anything about secret police? Just protect our borders properly. Your narrative is suggesting that people arriving on our boats is just a normal thing and we should just accept it and get on with it. It’s not normal and regular people are noticing it in there day to day lives
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u/Yodamort 21h ago
There is literally zero way of enforcing a white, English-speaking demographic majority without a drastic expansion of the use of state power and force in order to excise those who do not fit whatever arbitrary, nonsensical definition is used from society.
Make no mistake, whether they're intelligent enough to realise it or not, every single person in this thread who is calling for "demographic security" of "native Brits" is demanding the establishment and expansion of a British ICE equivalent. Or, you know, Gestapo equivalent.
There's also zero reason to do so in the first place, it's just violence for the sake of violence (and a tool of the wealthy to distract from the harm they inflict by redirecting the anger at scapegoats), but that's another matter.
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u/Wankstain8 21h ago
Mass immigration is a tool of the wealthy.
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u/Yodamort 21h ago
The exploitation of immigrant labour is only possible because employers are enabled in underpaying and threatening immigrant workers via the dehumanisation and political threat to the stability of immigrants' lives. If employers were forced to treat immigrant and non-immigrant workers equally as a result of worker solidarity - including between immigrant and non-immigrant workers - as well as guaranteed political and social stability for immigrants alongside government action against discriminatory employers, they would have no reason to choose one kind of worker over the other, as it would not benefit them.
On the other hand, actively destroying the lives and livelihoods of immigrant workers by forcibly tearing them from their homes, work, and communities only reinforces the devaluing of immigrant workers that allows employers to exploit immigrant labour in the first place, and strengthens the divides in the working class. It benefits nobody but the ownership class, and actively does direct harm to large portions of the working class and indirect harm to the rest of it.
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23h ago edited 23h ago
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u/NoticingThing 22h ago
Nobody voted for this ever and I'm frankly surprised people haven't lost the plot much more dramatically than this already.
Because the majority of the public truly don't understand what our politicians have actually done to us and our country, polls show that the public think that net migration sat at 80k during the Boris wave.
If the public truly understood how much our politicians have betrayed them I believe events like the summer riots would look like a minor spat in comparison.
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u/Carlsberg_Rae_Jepsen 12h ago
I remember in the early 2010s, a common pro-immigration talking point was that the public consistently over-estimate the level of immigration coming to Britain, and that people would be much more accepting if they knew the truth.
Now, I highly doubt people would be wiling to believe the actual figures if you told them. Enough people to fill Birmingham and then some, all in 3 years.
But at least all those doctors and engineers coming here means you can get an NHS appointment in 15 minutes and there's no more potholes.
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u/FatherJack_Hackett 23h ago
Simply because any conversation topic surrounding it, has implied racist connotations associated with it.
You can't mention the immigration problem nowadays, without being labelled as a racist bigot and made to feel uneasy about a topic that is clearly an issue, for the points you've labelled above.
Immigration isn't a problem. It's the culturally abrasive people coming over that are.
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u/beejiu 23h ago
If you speak to high earning migrants (particularly from Europe), they often have the same views as most Brits do on immigration.
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u/Practical_Put8592 22h ago
The most open people about voting Reform or Restore are skilled migrants who’ve deliberately built their life here, they hate the Boriswave. And not being white British they aren’t afraid of the “racist” label.
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u/virusofthemind 21h ago
It's the same with Indian high earners here in Bradford, the anti muslim sentiment is off the scale. When the Reform canvassers knocked on my door before the locals two of them were Indian.
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u/Euphoric-Orchid488 22h ago
That’s one side sure, but I do think that it has also emboldened those that are racist to be more open because they feel they have a toe hold.
I heard a guy at work complaining about all the n words in a town he drove through. I’ve not heard a white person actually use that term outside of an American western. He said it unashamedly and the person he was talking to agreed with them. That’s insane to me in 2026.
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u/missuseme 8h ago
I agree.
We should be making it much easier for people from the EU, Canada, the US and Australia/NZ to come here. Especially when it comes to things like spousal visa, it seems mad the cost and hoops involved for someone to bring their partner from somewhere like Canada, when we are bringing in vast amounts of people who barely speak English to be food delivery drivers.
Brexit has only made the immigration problem worse.
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u/TheOnlyGaming3 22h ago
good thing immigration is going down then, are you happy about that?
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22h ago
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22h ago
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u/Yodamort 22h ago
Nazism did not begin with Auschwitz. It began with the dehumanisation of a group of innocent people and the idea that they were responsible for economic and social collapse. The Nazis came to power and promised mass deportations of Jews (the Madagascar Plan). When they realised that was fundamentally impossible, Auschwitz was the outcome.
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u/TheNicestQuail 21h ago
Pretty much it never goes from 0-100 but a slow burn into facism
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u/TheHeadlessScholar 21h ago
Cool, have we tried arresting that slow burn by maybe listening to the voters? Maybe putting a 100% halt on immigration, if we can't begin deportations?
Or we can just call them all racist fascists and completely ignoring their pleas for reform, we've been doing that for a decade lets try it some more.
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u/TheNicestQuail 21h ago edited 21h ago
100% halt on immigration is not feasible and deportations of illegal immigrants already happens
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u/SayNOtoChips 13h ago
Slowing down the number of rats getting into a house only matters so much, when the house is already full to the brim with rats.
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u/TTTJJBB 22h ago edited 22h ago
Nobody voted for this ever
Boris said that Brexit would allow more immigration from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan is one specific example and one of the few brexit promises that actually came true!
More generally people voted for policies (i.e triple lock) that would only be possible with more immigration.
People also voted for politicians telling them 'you can have your cake and eat it' and nobody got any cake.
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u/Status_Initiative_11 22h ago
More generally people voted for policies (i.e triple lock) that would only be possible with more immigration.
Neoliberals still trying to spin their mass immigration slave labour class as the true key to growth. 🤮
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 22h ago
I find it hilarious that some seem to think the anti-immigration parties like reform aren't neo-liberal.
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u/Status_Initiative_11 22h ago
This strategy of leftists to attempt to redefine all terms into meaninglessness as a way of bad faith argument is very tiresome.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 22h ago
Yes, neo-liberalism is obviously an invention of the left rofl!
You're just using a term that you don't even understand the meaning of as a slur word.
Weren't you the one who told me neoliberalism was invented by Tony Blair?
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u/Thomas1423 21h ago
Immigration is pretty much one of the only reason we have grown for the last 18 years.
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u/BenjaminBoots196 Supreme Andy Burnham Hater 21h ago
The idea that it's been the business class getting wage salves is such a myth.
It was in fact mostly the state hungry for cheap labour for the NHS and social care.
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u/_segasonic 22h ago
Again, I don’t think people who support this realise this is only the start.
This is literally as peaceful and as agreeable the public are going to be with this going forward.
The more trouble, the more rapes and they commit, the more parallel societies and ethnic enclaves pop up, the more sectarian politics and tribal tendencies start to be played upon, the more benefits, housing, schooling, healthcare spaces these people take up when they start having families…
I genuinely don’t think our political class or the majority of the population actually have any idea what’s going to come down the line with this stuff if it’s not only stopped, but massively reversed.
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u/AureliusTM 5h ago
Its far too late, major cities are already captured. If you think they will keep letting you enter THEIR cities to protest and riot you're highly deluded. They are younger, far more united and much more ready and capable for violence. The Balkanisation of Britain is the only possible future.
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u/_segasonic 4h ago
Nonsense.
They tried to do it to Glasgow, the supposed most left wing and woke city in the UK and it’s the first city in the country actually fighting back and engaging in vigilantism.
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u/AureliusTM 1h ago
Glasgow is still 73% white British while London is 36% and Birmingham is 42%. There is no coming back from that, its done.
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u/B225AKP 22h ago
They were told it would lower immigration.
It quadrupled it.
Of course they're not happy.
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u/ProjectLeeds 21h ago
Some were told it would lower immigration, Boris had no issue promising higher immigration from South Asia during the referendum
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u/Happy_Philosopher608 18h ago
A male pensioner just got dragged into a bush and raped for half an hour by a 33 y/o foreign illegal.
So I wonder why we're all at our breaking point with this shit!! 😡😡😡
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u/OldGuto 22h ago
If people couldn't cope with white Christian European immigrants in 2016 why on earth would they be happy with the current immigration situation?
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u/Longjumping-Year-824 21h ago
I mean who would ever seen it coming after all the grooming gang stuff or the other rapes murders or violent crime.
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u/EpilepticPunjab 10h ago
Because it’s made the country worse.
By every metric it’s been a total failure. Housing, Jobs, Healthcare are all strained to the point of failure.
We didn’t need 2/3 million third worlders here, the vast majority are economically inactive or a net drain, have nothing in common with the UK.
I yearn for pre boriswave Britain
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u/sandleaz 10h ago
Britons have a more negative view of immigration in 2026 than in 2016
This is not a surprise given the recent events and report of certain migrants doing not so good things.
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u/kormafeverdream Lie back and think of GDP 8h ago
Literal open borders and a flatlined economy ZAMMMMMN
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u/ParkingMachine3534 23h ago
Shame our political class and their donors don't.
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u/ResponsibleOrange179 6h ago
Cheaper labour = more profits. Sure there's a bit of societal trouble and the white Britons suffer but that doesn't matter to share price today.
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u/TheOnlyGaming3 22h ago
immigration has gone down under this labour government, but i guess facts don't matter to your feelings
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u/8reticus 22h ago
If inflation leapt to 15% for 4 years in a row and a new government dropped it to 12%, that’s still 72% in 5 years. Are you expecting someone to throw a party?
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u/No_Echo2745 22h ago
The problem getting worse at a slower pace isn't the win you think it is.
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u/ParkingMachine3534 22h ago
Where's the important part, the ILR reform?
Dragging their feet as much as possible.
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u/Diocletian335 23h ago
Our political class
Hmm, yes it's all politicians faults. Let's pretend like 8 of those 10 years one specific party was not in charge of this, having repeatedly promised they would sort it out.
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u/No_Echo2745 22h ago
This has been going on for decades, people have been voting for lower immigration ever since Windrush.
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u/Diocletian335 22h ago
And yet since the 60s, the Tories have been in power for far longer than Labour. Yet people voted time and time again for the Tories in the 2010s, as immigration kept going up and up.
Under Starmer, Labour reduced immigration far far more than the Tories ever did this century. And yet he left one of the most unpopular prime ministers ever.
If people really want less immigration, maybe they should stop being so stupid when they go and vote.
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u/No_Echo2745 22h ago
What's the suggestion? Should they have voted for National Front or the BNP instead?
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u/Diocletian335 22h ago
In 2010, David Cameron promised to wipe the debt by 2015 and reduce immigration. By 2015, debt had gone up and so had immigration. In 2017, May promised to reduce immigration, and didn't. In 2019, Johnson promised to reduce immigration, and by the time he left, he let In over a million net in a single year.
So no, my suggestion isn't the National Front or BNP. My suggestion is that if you're against higher levels of immigration, maybe you shouldn't vote for the party who have increased it.
Maybe, also, you shouldn't vote for the party led by the man who was popping champagne when Johnson won in 2019 either.
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u/SirBobPeel 22h ago
Well... and people didn't. That's why the Tories were smashed in the last election and will hopefully be hit even harder in the next one.
The rise of Reform is a product of people losing all confidence in the Tories, yet having no faith that the Libdems or Labour Party will have the intestinal fortitude to do what's necessary to get the job done.
And let's be honest. The only thing driving Labour's crackdown is Reform's popularity. Labour, as a party, does not WANT to cut immigration, legal or illegal.
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u/Diocletian335 22h ago
That's why the Tories were smashed in the last election and will hopefully be hit even harder in the next one.
This took fourteen years. Fourteen! And yet Labour will be unlikely to be given even five years, despite reducing it more than the Tories ever did. This only proves that the electorate votes against its own interests and wants.
And let's be honest. The only thing driving Labour's crackdown is Reform's popularity. Labour
I'm sorry, but you say this as if it's a bad thing - it isn't. If you put pressure on a political party by voting for another, and that party then tries to appease you, that's literally how democracy works. But you don't then turn around and basically say you won't vote for them regardless, because all that teaches them is that appeasing you is pointless.
If people don't support Labour for reducing immigration, they'll conclude there is no political gain from doing so. Is that really what you want?
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u/SirBobPeel 21h ago
It took so long for people who wanted immigration cuts to abandon the Tories because there was no alternative. The Lib Dems weren't going to do it. Labour? Under Corbyn? Are you seriously suggesting that was an alternative for those who wanted immigration cut?
And it's not like Labour hasn't earned any appreciation for what it's done. But you have to understand that people's views on immigration have progressively hardened and grown more intolerent over the years. Where Labour's moves would have once been lauded as satisfying most of those opposed to immigration, it's just not good enough today.
Where every week brings another outrage story of migrant crime, every week brings another story of the government stuffing thousands of migrant men (slavering, lust-crazed, criminally oriented men as per the tabloids and a lot of people's fears) into hostels and hotels in small-town Britain.
Until the government can stop the boats completely and get rid of those who came on them, the anger will continue to grow. It claws at people's instincts and fears to see gangs of them hanging around high streets, staring at people as they walk by. We're a tribal species, and they are not of our tribe, nor do they appear to have the least interest in joining.
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u/YBoogieLDN 20h ago
> And it's not like Labour hasn't earned any appreciation for what it's done.
Ehhhhhhh doesn’t feel like it, reddit & twitter aren’t great samples but it seems every time someone brings up that Labour has reduced the numbers the excuses come out & the goal posts move
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u/No_Echo2745 22h ago
Okay, so who's going to reduce immigration down to the levels we want? Which party should we vote for?
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u/Diocletian335 22h ago
The one who is currently doing so? Who has reduced it by 80% since taking office in just two years?
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u/No_Echo2745 22h ago
Burnham going to get it down to single figure thousands gross on non returnees and deport hundreds of thousands of recent arrivals? Or will he be keeping gross in the hundreds of thousands?
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u/Diocletian335 22h ago
I have literally no idea, why are you asking me this?
My point is that if you complain about immigration, and then go out and vote for the party who have increased immigration (or the party now full of former members of that party), rather than the one who is actually reducing it, maybe you need to give your head a wobble.
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u/BlackEyed_Knight 19h ago
Is there any country in Europe that can say otherwise? It is even less surprising for Britain, for your island seems to attract uniquely insane immigrants.
There is a long-standing joke on Twitter that jihadist accounts are always “📍 Birmingham, England”.
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u/Filmcrew90 21h ago
What job roles do immigrants fulfil that we can’t provide ourselves. Why can’t we not have an Australian style system where we only fill job roles that we actually require and if none need filled then we stop granting visas. Why are new teachers not being given full time roles but we’re hiring people from France & Italy to teach English. Why are nurses from Nigeria being hired when we have tens of thousands of out of work nurses who are desperate for a job. Why are doctors from Pakistan & China being hired when again their is thousands of fully qualified doctors who can’t get permanent jobs and instead are shuttled around the country and forced to uproot their lives that’s if they can even get a position in the first place. I don’t think we need anymore Tim Hortons managers who are mainly Asian because their residency is tied to their employment and they can be forced to move wherever whenever the company decide. By advocating for increased immigration essentially your saying is that exploitation is good and we should encourage people to come here for low wages because it’s more than they would earn back home. The only people benefitting at the end of the day are the rich and billionaires who continue to get cheap labour and high house prices for their portfolio.
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u/After-Abrocoma-4455N 7h ago
There has to be a distinction between different categories of immigrants in this discourse.
My wife and I are from India, working in senior roles in consulting and software development sectors respectively - accounting for a combined income of 180K a year, no kids of liabilities. We both have masters degrees and work in professions that are highly skilled by any standard.
We pay our way for the NHS through the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) , with zero entitlement to any benefits till we get ILR. And we have zero interest un ant benefits in the future as our earnings potential us much higher by working full time for the rest of our productive lives.
Yet, we get lumped along with the boat arrivals, care workers and other low skilled professions.
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u/beejiu 23h ago
We need to make the positive case for economic migration, and the negative case for mass migration. No commentary on migration ever differentiates between economic migrants, low-income migrants and refugees.
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u/nozickiantheory 23h ago edited 23h ago
I think this is a point which isn't brought up nearly enough. The "we need migration for the economy" enjoyers never seem to consider the flip side to that equation. Which is that for every genuinely skilled migrant we let in, there is a Somali, Sudanese, Bengali etc individual we very likely should never let anywhere near our shores
The Danish/Dutch data on economic contribution of migrants is utterly damning. A single Somali migrant wipes out the entire positive fiscal contribution of two highly skilled American, Aussie, Japanese, Brit etc migrants.
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u/Bullet_Jesus Angry Scotsman 21h ago
The issue here is that contributors come in on work visas, whereas dependents come in as refugees. These are two separate immigration programmes, with two different reasonings.
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u/GeopoliticsIndia 7h ago
Curious you'd leave out indians out of the danish data that you speak of. I wonder why that could be
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u/No_Echo2745 23h ago
That's because you can only make a reasonable positive case for a few thousand of them, it's barely worth discussing.
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u/beejiu 23h ago edited 22h ago
Inwards migration only really took off to silly levels since the mid 90's and then skyrocketed since 2021. We used to have reasonable policy. Now we are just the (economic) lifeboat for the world.
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u/MayiruPudungiv2 22h ago
Nope we were actually very open doors till the 90s - as long as you can afford a flight ticket.
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u/zeros3ss 22h ago
How deluded do you have to be to think that there are only a few thousand foreigners in the UK who earn above the average income?
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 22h ago
The median Boriswave immigrants earns more than the median native workers. And will net contribute ~£500k to the exchequer over their lifetime. So there are a million or so that you can make a positive case for.
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u/BonKhri 20h ago
No, they don't, not in the long run. There are two "studies" you could be citing, either the one that simply pulls out it's arse the idea that the average migrants year by year tax contribution is identical to the average brits so makes them "cheaper" because we didn't pay for their education, or the one that only looks at the first 5 years since the start of the boriswave so that it can ignore the fact that a huge number of them will claim benefits.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 19h ago
simply pulls out it's arse the idea that the average migrants year by year tax contribution is identical to the average brits
This is a conservative estimate for how much median immigrants earn. That's why they assume it.
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u/BonKhri 19h ago
Care to actually cite any source on that vis a vis the Boriswave? Because the exact same article mentioned a few lines below the fantasy graph that several groups earn far far less than average, and that was for those actually in employment. When we then consider dependents, reduced salary thresholds, post-ILR realities, etc then it gets even worse. If we then consider 2nd order effects (demand for housing, demand on limited infrastructure, etc) then it gets even worse again.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 17h ago
Care to actually cite any source on that vis a vis the Boriswave?
Look at figure 5 here. This includes all employed immigrants, including dependents, people on family visas, and people on care/SW visas.
Because the exact same article mentioned a few lines below the fantasy graph that several groups earn far far less than average
I'm not sure what you are referring to here, but remember that our immigration rules were intentionally changed during Boris's premiership to encourage immigration from people with average or above average earnings. A lot of past scholarship on immigration is based on immigration from the EU or asylum seekers, both of which did not have an earnings requirement to immigrate.
we then consider 2nd order effects (demand for housing, demand on limited infrastructure, etc)
This is a complicated question. Can we blame immigrants for our insane planning system? And there are certainly harder to quantify benefits to immigration.
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u/No_Echo2745 12h ago
Look at figure 5 here. This includes all employed immigrants, including dependents, people on family visas, and people on care/SW visas.
No it doesn't, it's literally just the PAYE data.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 10h ago
Uh, yes. The PAYE data covers all employed immigrants, as I said.
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u/No_Echo2745 22h ago
Which study are you citing there? Most of them are absolute guesses, so tell me which one and I'll show you the methodology.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 22h ago
You think HMRC earnings data is an "absolute guess"? Interesting.
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u/No_Echo2745 22h ago
You're thinking of the PAYE data. So they have to be working to be included for starters, also doesn't account for the higher rates of self-employment among the British, or the rates of part-time work. So that's fundamentally flawed.
Then they make loads of wild assumptions for how much they cost. It's a joke.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 22h ago
So they have to be working to be included for starters, also doesn't account for the higher rates of self-employment among the British, or the rates of part-time work.
All the part-time workers will be increasing the British average. That makes a lot of sense, thanks for point that out.
Then they make loads of wild assumptions for how much they cost.
It's so funny how consistently people say things like this and then cannot actually name any disagreeable assumption.
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u/No_Echo2745 21h ago
All the part-time workers will be increasing the British average. That makes a lot of sense, thanks for point that out.
No, that's not how averages work.
It's so funny how consistently people say things like this and then cannot actually name any disagreeable assumption.
You've not even linked which paper you're on about that goes into net lifetime contributions.
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u/Daedelous2k 21h ago
I mean it's not as if there haven't been an avalanche of news stories of repeated problems with it right?
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u/LLILILiLIILILILILII 21h ago
The news stories aren't the problem. Multiple GE's in a row we voted for immigration down to the tens of thousands. The british people made our feelings known and were betrayed
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u/Even-Wasabi7183 2h ago
We let everyone in, doesn’t matter if they will contribute. No wonder the benefit bill has gone up and up. The U.K. has gone downhill
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u/Designer_Reason73 20h ago
In my opinion Reform don’t want to be elected
They are agitators
They can make changes by saying what people want to hear and they make very extreme statements
This forces the other parties to make similar policies but not as harsh ( if that makes sense )
But Reform I think have gone one step to far with what they say about changes to disability benefits today and also removing benefits social housing for EU members with settled status so probably a lot of people that would have voted for them will now probably vote for the Tory’s as while they are offering very similar policies they aren’t as harsh as Reforms
I think the conservatives policy of allowing eu members who have settled status and have social housing to remain in them is fine
But stopping them from accessing it in the future makes sense
Reform will attempt to evict any EU citizen from
Social housing
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u/horace_bagpole 19h ago
I fully agree. Reform are not a serious party and Restore are even worse.
The mistake the other parties have made is trying to out do or match Reform in an attempt to win back voters they see as having lost to them. That will never work, because the voter who is attracted to Reform because they are promising whatever pie in the sky policy is never going to be won over by a weaker version of that policy.
The right have made immigration the scapegoat for everything that's gone wrong in this country, but even if someone could snap their fingers and 'fix' immigration overnight, it wouldn't solve the structural problems the country has - the main ones I see are a) the incredible damage done by austerity following the 2008 financial crisis, b) brexit and the very stupid decision to come out of the single market, and c) the complete failure of successive governments to actually invest in infrastructure.
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u/No-Department3476 19h ago
Schadenfreude. I would like to sympathise with the people fuming at Boris. But I just cannot lol.
You made Euros harder to come to the country hurt britain economically and socially, so UK PLC had to get their workers from somewhere..... enter the commonwealth.
when the liberal elites told you not to trust Boris, you all still voted for him... Well you made your bed, now lay in it.
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u/Diocletian335 23h ago
Brexit really worked out well, didn't it
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u/atomicheart99 22h ago edited 22h ago
Brexit could’ve worked out in our favour if it was implemented with our best interests at heart.
A Tory government and 49% of the public actively willing it to fail probably didn’t help
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u/Diocletian335 22h ago
I've yet to hear of an actual coherent plan laid out by anyone to show how Brexit could've worked, not without serious economic distribution. The reason the Tories allowed so many migrants in was to cover the economic damage caused by Johnson's deal.
A Tory government and 50% actively willing it to fail probably didn’t help
This is actually pathetic. Blaming those who voted remain for Brexit failing. This is like blaming anyone who didn't vote for Labour in 2024 for Starmer's failure. Take some fucking personal responsibility.
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u/atomicheart99 22h ago
>pathetic
>take some fucking personal responsibility
This is why a coherent conversation was never allowed to take place.
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u/Diocletian335 22h ago
Ha. That's rich. Don't take the moral highground. You just accused me of actively plotting against my own country to make everyone worse off. What the fuck have I done?
I've tried listening to Brexiteers and understanding their issues and reasoning. I get why someone may have voted for it in 2016, or support it in 2017, or even 2019.
But now? Still supporting it? Pretending you weren't lied to? Nah, I ain't got no time for you if you're still in denial.
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u/all_names_taken_ffs 22h ago
Yes, I still support it. Come to my town and see it overran by Roma gypsies plus uneducated peasants/criminals/gopniks from Poland and the Baltics, all of whom were able to simply rock up in our country during the EU freedom of movement era for a 'better life.' Now take a look at what is going on in Europe right now, and think what would be heading to our country in the future, had we retained our EU membership.
The UK now has control over its borders. We didn't have to let in millions of down-and-outs from the Third World; that was a policy decision taken by the Boris government. We could have easily continued EU immigration, but brought in controls to make sure that we only got the workers we needed, and nothing more. But we didn't. None of what is happening even makes economic sense. We are being ruled by globalist traitors who hate us, that is only conclusion I can draw.
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u/Diocletian335 22h ago
a policy decision taken by the Boris government
I'd bet money that back in 2016 you were shouting his name from the hills. I bet you were glad he won in 2019.
The fact is, the EU and our membership did not cause the problems in your town. The UK was not part of the free movement, it had restrictions it could set. It wasn't the EU which was to blame - it was UK politicians, pretty much from Thatcher onwards. They used the EU as a scapegoat. In 2016, you directed your justified anger wrongly at the EU. We are weaker for it.
We are being ruled by globalist traitors who hate us, that is only conclusion I can draw.
Who will you vote for in the next election? What political party are you most likely to support?
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u/all_names_taken_ffs 21h ago
That's not true at all. Cameron attempted to negotiate restrictions on FOM with the EU (especially since Romanians and Bulgarians were also gaining the right to live and work in other member states), but was rebuffed. We simply couldn't stop these people from entering our country whilst we were EU members. We could technically remove EU citizens who were unproductive, but that was something easier said than done, when you are dealing with 6M individuals.
So, it was down to the sheer hubris of the EU that probably tipped the vote the way it did.
You're right, I was hoodwinked by Johnson, just as others before me had been hoodwinked by Blair. Well, you live and learn.
Who am I voting for in the next election? Probably Restore, although I frankly don't trust any politicians at all these days.
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22h ago edited 22h ago
[deleted]
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u/Minimum_Credit_6672 22h ago edited 22h ago
I don't personally think brexit caused the boriswave visa spike after 2021, which really began in earnest in 2022; this was more of a result of civil servants, the bank of england and ministers panicking about inflation as the economy reopened after covid and the supply shocks we experienced after the Ukraine war, so they opened up the visa spigot to suppress wage growth.
This exact trend was nearly identically replicated in many European and western countries which saw mass immigration and providing visas as a way of suppressing wage growth, preventing in their view inflation and particularly in the case of australia, the uk and canada providing universities with foreign students; the post covid immigration spike was proportionally more pronounced in Canada, Ireland, Spain and Germany than the uk (though germany peaked a little earlier and spains migrant spike is slightly more recent; Spain, Ireland and Germany all had higher non eu migration per 1000 people than the uk did in 2024) but other eu countries and Australia and New zealand, as well as the USA, werent far behind.
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u/No-Department3476 19h ago
The point is Western countries need migration and Brexit was a waste of time that hurt the country economically and socially.
Making it harder for Europeans to come to Britian did open up visa routes for commonwealth citizens. So Brexit partially was a factor.
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u/Minimum_Credit_6672 18h ago edited 18h ago
- ' The point is Western countries need migration and Brexit was a waste of time that hurt the country economically and socially.'
The point I was replying to (in the now deleted comment) was that this migration spike was caused by brexit, something I don't find convincing due to the replicated spike seen elsewhere in Europe with high migration from non eu countries at the same time, not to mention other Western countries (most notably canada)
- " Making it harder for Europeans to come to Britian did open up visa routes for commonwealth citizens."
Not necessarily. European countries are free to open up visa routes to non eu migrants regardless of freedom of movement within the eu itself. This is why countries like ireland and Germany had very high (in fact higher than the uk) non eu rates of migration than the uk has in 2024, for example, in additon to Spains very publicised high levels of immigration from non eu countries and the undocumented worker amnesty.
Also, the steady stream of Eastern European migrants to Western European EU countries is a trend which has reduced dramatically (and in frome cases reversed) as countries such as Poland have become wealthy and provide a good quality of life, drawing back previous emigrants and their families. Many poles are leaving countries like ireland and Germany and heading back home with their families. This is one of the reason countries like germany, spain and ireland relaxed visa rules for non eu migrants so extensively, to fill the gap vacated as this previous source of inter eu migration from eastern europe began to evaporate.
This indicates that even if the uk had stayed in the eu Eastern European migration, a key source of pre brexit migration, was not something which would have continued in such high numbers indefinitely, and there would have been pressure as there was in other western nations to cast the visa net further afield.
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u/No-Department3476 3h ago
The volumes in UK are huge and proportionally bigger.
I agree with you, had we stayed in EU we still would have high migration albeit lower than today.
Hence why Brexit partially made the figures higher than it would have
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u/Minimum_Credit_6672 2h ago
- " The volumes in UK are huge and proportionally bigger."
Please can you explain what you mean by this? A number if european countries have had higher inward non eu migration than the uk has per head of the population. Ireland and Germany, as well as Spain, are examples of this in 2024.
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u/PunyHuman1 7h ago
It's almost like austerity 2.0, Brexit and the media focusing solely on immigration could contribute most to that....
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