November 21, 2023 - 1:00pm
British voters, especially national populists, are annoyed by small boats, high immigration and pro-Palestine marches, but most do not yet realise the transformative scale of today’s immigration levels. Ahead of the publication of UK migration statistics later this week, they are not sufficiently agitated to support an electoral insurgency.
The academic Matthew Goodwin pointed out that voters support the Rwanda scheme by a 40-32 margin, rising to 71% among 2019 Tory voters. YouGov’s most important issues tracker shows that immigration is, for the first time since Brexit, the top issue for Conservatives, and a leading concern for 37% of the public.
On the other hand, by a 57-20 margin, people support Suella Braverman’s sacking from the post of home secretary, as does a slim 44-39 share of 2019 Tory voters and Leave voters. How can we make sense of these apparently contradictory findings? To find out, I conducted a small survey of 289 2019 Conservative voters on Prolific, a platform used by many academics, on Monday. The sample divided 43-39 in favour of sacking Braverman, about the same as YouGov’s nationally representative data from last week.
The most important factor predicting support for Braverman’s sacking is popular perception of the scale of immigration. Those who have noticed substantially higher immigration since Brexit are much less likely to agree with sacking the former home secretary than other Tory voters. Older voters like her more than the young, 2017 Tory voters more than 2017 Labour-Tory switchers, and Leavers more than Remainers. The chart below shows how support for Braverman changes as these parameters are altered: some three in four Labour-Tory switchers backed Braverman’s sacking, compared to just 32% of those Tories who believe immigration has increased a lot since Brexit.
When I asked respondents to summarise Braverman in a few words, Left-liberal critiques tended to paint her as a nasty racist; conservative respondents who worry about immigration but think she should be sacked tend to see her as rude, ambitious, uncaring and obnoxious, as the word cloud below reveals. When asked why they favoured her removal, such voters were mainly concerned about her undermining Rishi Sunak, the party or the police’s authority. Mainstream media coverage may have shaped the perceptions of such voters.
Yet in today’s high-migration status quo, with resistance from Tory liberals and a hostile media, only an abrasive politician is likely to break through. Britain is unlikely to produce a polite restrictionist who walks softly and carries a big stick. The question, therefore, is how much migration national conservative voters can tolerate before they hold their nose and vote for an upstart.
Net migration to Britain declined somewhat between 2016 and 2021 due to Brexit and the pandemic. However, it has reached an unprecedented 500,000-700,000 during 2022-2023 as Channel crossings soared. It is therefore striking that in my sample of Tories, just 39% felt immigration had “increased a lot” since Brexit. This is only two points higher than what I found in a similar sample on 22 May prior to net migration figures of 600,000 being announced. When I had a second sample of 2019 Tories read about the new figures, the share saying immigration had risen a lot leapt 20 points to 57%, revealing the headroom that still exists for perceptions of immigration levels to rise.
The priority of immigration as a top issue among Tories has risen since May from 54 to 61%, yet this is still about 10 points lower than prior to the Brexit vote. Brexit and the pandemic have faded as issues but the economy is still nearly as important as immigration for Conservatives, with healthcare at 43%. Further change in these indicators is probably required before immigration dominates the small-c conservative electorate as squarely as it did pre-Brexit.
It took four years for record-breaking immigration levels under Tony Blair to begin costing him votes, several more for it to fuel the rise of the BNP and a decade to power Ukip’s rise. Reform UK is up a few points since May, sometimes reaching 10%, but public opinion is a tanker that takes time to change course. As it does, it is likely to further split the Tories before becoming a hospital pass for Starmer.
Eric Kaufmann is Professor at the University of Buckingham, and author of Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities. He is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange.
epkaufm
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIt’s hard for voters to make the connection between immigration and failing public services and rents and house prices rising to levels that are increasingly out of reach when politicians and media go out of their way to obfuscate these issues.
They don’t want a serious debate about housing because it might mean:
1. Older voters having to downsize.
2. Buy-to-let industry being smashed.
3. Building houses (!).
Immigration is only one factor and lots of immigrants work in the building industry (or used to/could).
I had the misfortune of having an extended stay in my local hospital in a relatively affluent area recently. Most of the beds were occupied by old people – not immigrants. And a huge proportion of the staff were immigrants.
And why are the staff immigrants? Because brits aren’t willing to work that hard for the pay offered. And why isn’t the pay offered sufficient? Because brits aren’t willing to pay for the services.
It’s not the media, the politicians or the woke liberal elite dragging immigrants in. It’s you, Hugh. You and your “too much tax”, your 2 for £5 chickens and your more for less.
I think it’s much more likely to be a consequence of your freeloading.
What is his/her freeloading?
No idea haha. I’m by far a net contributor to the tax system. The stay at the hospital was in support of an ill friend.
Good to see lots of downvotes for my comment and an equal number of upvotes for a nonsensical insult with no substance on a platform which is supposed to value free speech.
But surely part of the reason that pay for these jobs is so low and the cost of living is so high is because of immigration. Which has driven salaries down and increased demand for housing.
It’s true that due to immigration Britain has become a wealthier country. But real question is, wealthier for who? The benefits (at least financial) seem to be very asymmetric depending on your previous level of wealth.
Mass immigration is always justified as a necessity for aging populations. But the truth is we probably could have managed without it and taken the economic pain to preserve social cohesion. And maybe if the cost of living hadn’t been inflated so badly my mass immigration, young people may have been more inclined to have children…
“It’s true that due to immigration Britain has become a wealthier country.”
Yes, but with falling GDP/capita. Not the best tradeoff, in my opinion.
True, but (generic) You are more than welcome to make the argument about less migration and live with the costs of the policy.
Who is going to work (low skill, low wage) in nursing homes?
If the jobs were better paid we would pay more for healthcare which Brits are unwilling to do.
Immigrants only make up 13% of construction workers in the UK. There is a huge opportunity to train more British workers rather than importing them from abroad and apprenticeships should be mandated as part of awarding contracts to builders.
Re: NHS workers, in the 2019 manifesto the Tories pledged to employ an extra 50k nurses over the parliament – so that’s 10k a year. Even if 50% needed to be imported, those 5k per year could easily be done inside an annual cap of 100k.
People often forget that immigrants are not only health service workers but also health service users, not only extra workers but also extra benefit and pension recipients. Not only house builders but also tenants and home owners.
A reliance on mass immigration to fix a demographic imbalance is just a miserable Ponzi scheme that no serious government would allow.
For at least twenty years now we have not been allowing enough British students to study medicine in this country – despite excellent qualifications, thousands fail to secure places to study medicine as consecutive appalling governments would much rather import doctors from countries that can ill afford to lose them than invest in first class medical training and, more generally, the skills development of those born here.
School leavers and graduates have been betrayed by governments in just about every sector.
In the face of the added rot of DEI I wonder how many can keep even remotely optimistic.
It is crazy that we boost STEM subjects at schools and then when we have kids leaving with 3 A levels in sciences and maths and are eager to get a place to study medicine (there are 11 well qualified candidates for each place) we turn them down.
.
“…enough British students to study medicine….”
True (!)…but why?
Because (according to DT or Spectator – don’t exactly remember the source) it would costs NHS £1 billion.
Better to import those people and let other countries pay the bill.
The issue is that to govern is to choose; I am afraid to say that the British people believe in “cakeism”.
Agree to a point that restrictions on housing have a part to play. And the pricing mechanism and lifting those restrictions would have a huge part to play. But a massive influx of people in a very short space of time will necessarily increase demand far faster than supply.
In other countries (like Japan) that have restricted immigration, the pricing mechanism has meant that investment has taken place in either automation or increased wages for the internal population. By allowing prices to do what they do, the most efficient response takes place. But keeping the borders as fully open as they are distorts that mechanism.
Just as EU membership and our inability to control immigration numbers became linked, so to, given time, will the immigration numbers and the chance of young people to buy their own house.
You’d think so wouldn’t you, but there seems to be a stubborn cognitive dissonance where this stuff is concerned. If we are to believe things like polls, focus groups and social attitudes surveys, younger people are overwhelmingly likely to support left-wing politics including open door immigration and the degrowth economics that obstructs new development, but at the same time hate the Tories for housing unaffordability. Voters also, apparently, support climate change initiatives but will vote against any government which causes a cost of living crisis by implementing the policies that result from them.
I suspect that there is literally no end to how long a left-wing propaganda machine can maintain the loyalty of just enough voters where this nonsense is concerned.
I heard an interesting interview yesterday (Poppy Coburn on Louise Perry’s podcast) related to this.
Apparently the issue of social housing in London is a hot topic with Gen Zs. London has by far the highest levels of social housing in the UK (23% of all dwellings are socially rented) and it is almost all occupied by recent immigrants and “problem families”. The question the youth are asking is – why can’t hard-working young British couples wanting to start a family get a council flat to live in? Why are forced into the financially crippling private rental market? Why can’t a teacher in a London school or a policeman at the Met or a clerical worker in the City get to the top of the housing list?
These are good questions and could lead to some very interesting answers!
As early as 1988 Maggie’s favorite think tank (guess which one) published a piece on housing and land use.
I know it is not popular here (the truth often is not) but land use regulations are a bigger problem than migration.
P.S. There is good migration (Poles, Eastern Europeans) and bad migration (Pakistanis, Nigerians, etc)…but here we are. Fewer Poles more Pakistanis.
Land use regulations and immigration are two sides of the same coin. Immigration pushes up demand, land use restrictions choke off supply. You could either reduce demand or increase supply. I would rather reduce demand by drastically reducing net immigration to 50k. We may still need to alter planning rules but at least we would no longer be building houses solely to house immigrants as we do now.
My MP explicitly voted in favour of Brexit so that he could bring in more immigrants from Pakistan, rather than immigrants from Europe. (He has said so.)
Really? Who is that and when did he say it?
Suggest Google Mohammad Saqib Bhatti
Says it all, in a nutshell.
It’s really not hard … it requires only the most minimal amount of common sense.
The problem with limitless immigration is that along with all the ‘good’ migrants we allow in, we also let many ‘bad’ ones in too. This creates a situation where government has to increase surveillance technology as a means of countering potential terrorism. Not only that but schools are also bursting at the seams to teach children who have very little in common with their host country and very little desire to integrate.
My grandfather who fought in the Second World War once said something to me that has always stuck. I dismissed it at the time as the ramblings of an old man, but over the last few years I’m starting to think he was correct: “Once we let too many of them, they will want to change things to their way.” As we see witness the culmination of wokeism with the antisemitic hordes marching through our city streets accosting people who disagree with them, I’m beginning to think we are now at this point.
Another fantasy!
“As we see witness the culmination of wokeism with the antisemitic hordes marching through our city streets accosting people who disagree with them”
You forgot to mention your fascist friends who attacked the police and tried to disrupt the Remembrance Day ceremonies.
Sadly, most of your wokes will be home grown.
Indian-origin people generally hate all the SJ / woke stuff
Perhaps perception of the immigration problem depends on where you live. My North London neighbourhood has been completely transformed by migrants from the East over the last 20 years. The ethnic English (if I can call them that) are gradually moving out or dying out to be replaced by East Europeans, middle-Easterners and Asians.
Out in the Tory shires this relentless ‘replacement’ may seem like a distant issue one can afford to be philosophical about.
Usually it’s the other way around with people in the countryside being overly sensitive to the issue because 1 extra immigrant in a town of 99 white British is noticeable but 5 extra immigrants in a diverse city like London is less obvious.
Only a third of Londoners are white Britons, according to the ONS, who generally understate these matters. So of course an extra 5% non Brits doesn’t show.
Sure, but French bankers and German lawyers are the issue in London?!
That’s about the most wishful thinking I’ve ever seen advanced in apparent seriousness.
Your comment about “the Tory shires” may not age well ! Mid Beds is now Labour – so nothing’s safe at this point.
Point taken. The “Blue Wall” is crumbling. Do the desperate conservatives really believe Keir Starmer’s Labour or the irredeemably goofy LibDems will answer their prayers? Perhaps they imagine that if the Tory party dies something truly conservative will rise Phoenix-like from the ashes. Fat chance.
Perhaps if we had a national broadcaster that told the truth, and didn’t deal in omissions, innuendo, subtle bias, and gaslighting, then people would be better informed. It appears that most of our chattering class have a morbid fear of right-wing white manual workers (probably who they were bullied by in their formative years) and will do anything to avoid spooking them into political action.
The numbers are public information,
The big problem is the UKs voting system. FPTP makes it incredibly hard for smaller parties to break through, UKIP winning around 11% of the vote but only receiving 1 MP out of 650 in 2015 being a prime example. If voters feel that voting for a minor party is basically a wasted vote (and often it is) then they’re much less likely to vote for them, so instead simply pick what they perceive to be the least worst option out if the major parties in a vain hope that their vote actually counts for something.
It’s much easier for smaller parties to grow under PR, and as such we see anti immigration parties starting to have more influence across Europe. In Britain if both major parties simply refuse to discuss the issue it’s incredibly difficult to force it. Brexit took decades of political pressure to happen, and even then was thwarted at every opportunity
They are not aware because the State and the State Media have for 20 years actively suppressed & manipulated debate on the impact of mass uncontrolled immigration. And they have triumphed, creating a Soviet like Alt Reality. As with the similar Goebellzing on Net Zero and Lockdown, the actual connections between our post Millennium 8 million plus inflows and the collapse of our unprepared public services, the turmoil in our housing and labour markets have all been Newspeaked – we have experienced censorship and lies, with any dissent branded racist. Come on Eric – please stop pretending the UK of 2023 is still an open free society. You are here (hurrah) but not making a documentary series on the BBC. The people do not know what has gone on.
“Mainstream media coverage may have shaped the perceptions of such voters.”
Well, no s*** Sherlock!
Absurd!
the annual migration numbers are public info.
Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Spectator, Express (and other online news sources) endless bang on about migration.
Every time I bothered to watch Question Time people in the audience asked about migration…what more do you want.
The issue (brace yourself!!!) is that less migration has real economic consequences (and BTW i am fine with that) but the Tory party and most of the British polity (yes, the people!) don’t want to make hard choices.
To govern is to choose!
Perhaps the people who believed Braverman should have been sacked just didn’t think she was very good at her job? You know, ‘cos immigration has reached its heights during her tenure as Home Secretary? I mean, I don’t see “Competent” anywhere in the word-cloud (or whatever it’s called).
It’d take the Thames foaming with much blood for the average voter to notice what’s going on.
“Where is the populist backlash over immigration in Britain?”
It’s on its way. The fools in Westminster just aren’t seeing it yet.
Some of the sample sizes in Eric Kaufmann’s graph above must be really tiny. Only 8% of 2017 Labour voters switched to the Tories in 2019, and those switchers made up only around 7% of the total Tory vote in 2019. So that implies barely 20 people out of a total sample population of 289. No meaningful conclusions can be drawn from a sample size that small. And Mr. Kaufmann does himself, and his readers, no favours by attempting to do so.
Farage has had a few things to say about rising immigration. It’ll be interesting to see if he runs with the issue when he gets out of the jungle, particularly given Reform’s policy of “net zero immigration” (what a very good idea!)
It would probably take something along the lines of the Swedish gang wars; that’s what it took in Sweden.
There hasn’t really been any genuine appetite for reducing immigration – before Brexit more than half of UK immigration was non-EU and under our control, but no government was seriously interested in reduction.
Brexit was never about reducing immigration – David Davis as Brexit Secretary literally admitted that – but the perception that it was took hold and so here we are.
It’s a great shame there’s never been a grown-up debate about immigration; by the time it gets to a Swedish-style realisation, it’s a bit too late.
Suella was too tough for British tastes today. She resembles an American conservative. In fact, I think she’s become a little of the product of the Internet Right.
I’d be in a relatively small minority who’d support her platform to be UK Prime Minister. Most British small-c conservatives would opt for Liz Truss in her place, or even Nigel Farage.
Liz Truss is an economic liberal who is pro immigration….
“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” said Theodore Roosevelt. Good advice for us all! 🙂
What’s this “national Conservatives” and “national populists” language about?
Nothing. Centrism and right-wing populism are both con tricks, designed to sell the same extreme and unpopular economic and foreign policies to different audiences by pretending to wage a culture war. In reality, the average Guardian writer or Labour MP leads a much more conventional life than many a counterpart on the Conservative benches or the Telegraph. And hegemony belongs to the social and cultural purpose of neoliberalism and basis of neoconservatism.
Yah yah yah, totes. Its the macho male ego’s preocvUpyiNg aNd OvRriDiNg OBSE$$ION WiTh d0m1n8T’iNg WImpuDs aNd OgraiStIC BLOODlIft1nG!!!!
AnD tHeN ThE JeeeWwwWssSssss??!?!????
The culture war is real, tangible, and being waged by the progressive Left. You know it as well as I do. This cultural Revolution it is true has not been achieved by capturing the government itself, but on so many issues, including the absurd inability of a government to actually implement its (popular!) policies on asylum and others, it is in office but not in power.
And on economic issues, with vast state spending and debt, the idea that if we get rid of a few nasty “neoliberals” (just an almost meaningless “boo” term usually) we will soon be living in socialist nirvana is just for the birds. The country is living completely beyond its means, however unpopular it may be to say so. If there as there is stagnant productivity, you can’t just magic wealth into existence.
If you listen to population and demographic experts they convey our birth rate and aging population inevitably require more immigration, although the degree to which is debated. Tech and AI may reduce some of the gap, but currently as we stand we have labour market with too many vacancies, esp in the ‘caring’ professions. This will ‘bite the backside’ of many older Voters if it hasn’t already.
The issue with the public IMO is that post Brexit many now better understand this. So don’t ‘buy’ the same populist over-simplification. However events like the Support for Palestine marches illuminates a nagging concern about assimilation and fear of decay in British values. I think the fear overstated and deliberately wiped up by certain media and individuals, but ‘no smoke without some fire’ entirely either. I don’t think we do enough on naturalisation and what needs to go with becoming a British citizen, nor what we imbibe through schooling.
Braverman and others may well have got a better overall reaction if they dialled down the de-humanisation stuff, ran a competent processing system, and also crucially focused on the need for a process of demonstrating appreciation for British values as part of any deal about staying long term. Wouldn’t stop all ‘wrong ins’ getting through, but would certainly play more to the with ‘rights go responsibilities’. Would need some hard yards on the Policy development front, and then investment in the process, but the trends behind this are not going to abate.
The idea that we need vast levels of immigration indefinitely to make up for an ageing population is ultimately a Ponzi scheme.
Being dependent on immigration to the extent Britain is a destructive addiction the country needs to shed. Where, by the way, is the National Infrastructure Plan to accommodate over 1 million per annum gross, 600,000 net migration?
Very good.
It’s difficult, I suspect, for Unherd users to appreciate just how little attention the man in the street pays to politics between elections. If interrupted by a pollster while going about their daily business, they will tend to just vote with their tribe.
Don’t judge them too harshly.
Which British voters are annoyed by the marches for a ceasefire in Gaza, which is the position of 76 per cent of the population? And how many of the Jewish half of one per cent of the population had one ancestor in these Islands 150 years ago? My father fought the Irgun, and so did a lot of other people’s. I do not know who told the Stern Gang that it owned the Cenotaph.
They are marches in which large numbers of people are calling for the destruction of a state of Israel. Would the “moderate” demonstrators be marching with a bunch of neo Nazis?
If you can’t see the difference between Hamas and a democratic state of Israel, then your judgement is very awry. The Stern Gang were undoubtedly ruthless, but on the whole Zionists have immigrated and built a robust society peacefully, with the vast majority of violence being instigated by the Arab Muslim side, including in 2929, 1947, 1967, 1973 and 2023..
There have been no Britons murdered by Jews in recent years this country, which unfortunately cannot be said in the case if our Muslim population.