In a letter published in this paper on Monday, William Blake of Hampshire wrote that he was supporting Reform because of “the overwhelming number of immigrants”. On the same page, Peter Martin of Hertfordshire wondered if the obsession with those on small boats – a “tiny minority” – was a “smokescreen to deflect” from the large numbers of legal migrants coming into the UK.
You see how impressions and emotions can determine elections. But facts matter. And facts about immigration have gone missing, or been successfully obscured.
Rishi Sunak and his gang have been so manipulative on this issue that Nigel Farage is seen as an upright chap, an honest broker. He is neither, but he sure knows how to work the crowds, the mainstream media and internet sites like TikTok where millions – including young Britons – follow him.
The saviour is not what he seems. In his spry, even-handed biography on Farage, journalist Michael Crick described his subject’s heroising of Enoch Powell and his alliances with far-right parties in the European parliament.
Now the anti-hero projects himself as a tireless protector of our shores from “invading” foreigners and portrays the ruling Tories and others in parliament as unpatriotic elites who have lost control of our borders. This stuff plays well with those who are filled with inchoate anger and hopelessness, people who have been failed by the powerful. Sunak, James Cleverly and Suella Braverman have used the same ploys against Labour.
Here are some truths neither Reform nor the Tory government tells you. I share them to disabuse at least some who have successfully been conned by these right-wingers.
Here is what Full Fact, a non-partisan fact-checking charity, said about our asylum system in August last year: “There are currently no visa routes available for the purposes of travelling to the UK to claim asylum, and it is not possible to apply for asylum in the UK without being physically present here.”
The UK does provide some humanitarian and other forms of protection to vulnerable people from specific areas but getting refuge legally is well nigh impossible. Those on small boats are not “illegals”. They are being used as political foils.
There’s more. An internal Home Office report concluded that the “role of welfare policies, economic factors and labour market access as potential drivers of migration to the UK is limited as many asylum seekers have little to no understanding of current asylum policies and the economic conditions of a destination country”.
This information and the following figures come from the Migration Observatory in Oxford, an invaluable, reliable resource. In 2022, settled asylum seekers made up 5 per cent of the UK’s foreign born population and 0.6 per cent of the total population. The current sound and fury is completely disproportionate to the actual numbers. Between 2014 and 2021, the numbers of those who received an initial decision on their claim within six months fell from 87 per cent to 6 per cent. That’s because processing was consciously reduced.
Now to Rwanda. We’ve just learnt that more than £320m spent on this scheme is not recoverable if the Tories lose the election. Sunak indignantly accuses Starmer of failing to support this policy while it sinks before our eyes.
By 24 June, more people had tried to cross the Channel this year than in the same period of the previous four years. On Monday, Sonya Sceats, the CEO of Freedom from Torture, talked to The Guardian about the “disastrous ‘cash-for-humans’” measures and described the impact on their clients, “who have suffered torture only to face existential dread here… at the prospect of being bundled on to planes to Rwanda, a notorious torturing state”.
According to the Helen Bamber Foundation, asylum seekers held in army camps are intensely fearful, some suicidal. Children in other centres are self-harming and becoming mentally ill.
The hysterical focus on small boats has deflected voters from the huge increase in legal migration. That is the ploy. At an all-time peak in 2022, 745,000 people were invited in. In 2015, the figure was 379,000. The country would seize up without incoming highly skilled and dedicated workers. Reform gives glib answers when asked about that and Sunak talks with a forked tongue.
Beware of Trumpian, nationalist politicians who want to keep Britain “British”. If they get their way, the NHS and care sector, hospitality and small businesses, the arts, academics, food production and cleaning, and research and development would suffer immeasurably.
But if that is what you dream of, go ahead, vote for Farage and Sunak. Just don’t say you didn’t know, and complain when the worst comes to pass.