Notwithstanding the sound and fury of the Conservative party descending into more mayhem, pledging to cut immigration will not be its saviour. If the Tories think it’s an ejector seat from their political nosedive, that’s a forlorn hope. The cost of living tops voters’ concerns, so distracting them with immigration noise hardly looks like a winner: even on immigration, as on every issue but defence, Labour leads in the polls.
Having already morphed into Ukip, the Conservatives now lean to Reform. Brexit won the election for them last time; couldn’t an immigration scare win now? After all, Brexit and immigration became political conjoined twins. But they forget who has overseen net migration figures reaching 672,000 in the UK in the year to June 2023. Though 60% of those polled by YouGov say immigration is too high, its salience in terms of what matters most to voters has fallen steeply since Brexit.
Passions on immigration are intense among the mere 9% who see it as a top priority. But back in 2015, for 44% of voters it was their greatest concern, according to an Institute for Public Policy Research report co-written by Robert Ford, a professor of political science. Attitudes have changed, with young people most positive towards immigration and not becoming more anti-migrant as they age. The UK is more positive about migration than many of its European neighbours. Who cares about it most? The hardest core Tory vote that Labour needs not try to penetrate.
Ask what kind of migrants people don’t want and the answer barely relates to the real figures, which are dominated by students and those on work visas. Do people object to foreign students and their dependants? They bring treasure chests to universities and university towns, paying fees of up to £38,000 a year and up to £1,400 a month in living costs – and almost all of them go home. No, it’s not them.
What of those invited on work visas? The vast majority of them work in health and social care: almost half the promised extra nurses recruited last year were trained overseas. No, don’t stop them.
One-off flows of 80,000 people came from Ukraine and Hong Kong in 2022, but they arrived with strong public support.
Among skilled workers, the new salary threshold of £38,000 will hit hospitality and catering staff most. Do people want them exiled?
Did Brexiters mean a drop of 70% in EU workers should be replaced with many more from around the world, swapping near neighbours for those from further afield? Possibly not.
What people worry about is that sense of uncontrolled borders, those small boats arriving randomly, unchecked. But Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Nigel Farage and the rest conflate the total number of migrants issued with visas with the relatively small number (29,090 since 1 January 2023) who arrived here in boats. A few hundred people sent to Rwanda would barely touch the totals, yet the Conservatives eviscerate themselves over the details. The ambitious Tories hoping Rwanda is their springboard to success are diving headfirst into an empty pool of a policy fiasco.
While the Braverman ranters shout for cutting numbers at any cost regardless, Labour wisely refuses to set an “arbitrary target” on cutting net migration. Look what that failure did to every Tory leader. The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, rightly focuses on the failure to deal with the boat arrivals, which accounted for 45% of all asylum claims in 2022. In total, more than 75% of asylum claims were granted refugee status or humanitarian protection at the initial decision stage in the year to September 2023, but the asylum backlog now stands at more than 175,000 people waiting in limbo, unable to work, when they could be in jobs tomorrow if they had been processed quicker. No, they wouldn’t be taking other people’s jobs in this hungry labour market. Nor taking homes: it’s the acute lack of construction workers that is holding back building. As for taking NHS appointments, as noted earlier, health and social care is the sector that most migrants work in.
That’s where this week’s panicky new immigration rules – especially barring carers from bringing families from spring next year – will do most damage. By chance, that blow fell just in time for a long-arranged conference of senior NHS and social care people at the King’s Fund on Wednesday, where they discussed the urgent need to recruit and retain staff. Here on display was this government’s perpetual state of cognitive dissonance. How do you recruit and retain staff and at the same time deter and prevent them from coming here to take those 264,000 vacancies in the NHS and social care? There was despair at the effect of banning carers from bringing their families: those in the room reckoned carers would choose welcoming countries elsewhere that pay them more.
Angriest and most outspoken was Steve Brine, the Tory chair of the Commons’ health and social care select committee. “They should show me the evidence that people will still come without their families,” he told me. “There isn’t any. Care England says it was never consulted on this. The government expects enough homegrown people to work in care instead? I’ve talked to schools: young people won’t take these bottom-wiping jobs.” Besides, failure to bring in promised social care reform keeps pay abysmal. “Immigration is the price we have to pay willingly, not begrudgingly,” Brine said. As he’s standing down at the next election, he’s free to speak his indignation at a doomed policy made for all the wrong reasons.
Immigration tears apart parties around the world, terrifying some politicians as they watch others stir venomous xenophobia and race resentments. But in the UK, Brexit may have helped increase the appetite for such extremism among some voters. While there is 47% public support for the Rwanda policy, according to some polls, there’s no wish to turn the UK into an international pariah, with only 22% public support for leaving the European convention on human rights and 57% against. Opinion on immigration has softened.
Spineless Rishi Sunak should have told some home truths about migration. He should have reminded his party and the public that we need lucrative foreign students and useful workers invited here with visas. Immigration is not out of control, even if boats are hard to stop. But he lives in fear of the monsters in his party that he was always too weak to confront.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
