Nearly two-thirds of all British voters, including a plurality of supporters of the top left-wing parties, favour reducing immigration into the United Kingdom, a poll has found.
A poll by Whitestone Insight found that 62 per cent of British adults somewhat or strongly supported the idea of “reducing total migration to the UK,” the Daily Mail reported.
Strikingly, the support for reducing migration was seen across the board, with most supporters of the typically pro-mas migration Liberal Democrat and Labour parties favouring a cut in the number of foreigners allowed into the country.
According to the survey, which took in an uncommonly large sample size of 13,534 people, 46 per cent of Labour voters backed reducing total migration to the UK, compared to 43 per cent who opposed the notion. Unsurprisingly, support was strongest among Tory voters, 89 per cent of whom said they want to see numbers of immigrants come down.
The poll comes as the governing Conservative Party has overseen a sharp increase in net migration, which has soared to over 1.2 million over the past two years, despite promises to the public that they would “take back control” of immigration following the country’s exit from the European Union.
While the tens of thousands of illegal boat migrants are often the focus of the conversation surrounding immigration in Britain, the millions of foreigners allowed into the country legally have had far more impact on the lives of British citizens, such as inflating the cost of housing and deflating the value of labour, as well as in areas such as social cohesion.
Yet, the neo-liberal government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak continues to maintain that mass migration is necessary to prop up the UK economy. This claim was undermined last week as the nation slipped into a recession while the country experienced the highest levels of migration ever. The claim was further undercut this week by a report which found that jobless migrants and foreign students had cost the taxpayer £36 billion since 2020, alone.
The survey from Whitestone Insight found that the public is to the right politically of all major parties on other issues, such as gender and the green agenda. For example, 54 of the respondents said they would be in favour of banning children from changing their gender or using different pronouns without consent from parents, which is further than the position of the supposedly Conservative government. Even 43 per cent of Labour voters were in favour of a ban, compared to 43 per cent opposed and 14 per cent undecided.
Similarly, about half the country, including even a quarter of Green Party supporters is in opposition to the Tory ‘Net Zero’ plan to phase out petrol cars by 2035.
The pollsters said that their survey demonstrated that the electorate is more right-wing than any of the major political parties realise.
Whitestone Insight founder Andrew Hawkins said: “It is the parties themselves, including the Conservatives, which have moved more Leftwards, while many voters have not been carried with them. It is clear from the poll that voters want to keep the option of buying a petrol or diesel car, know what a woman is, and want the Government to protect Britain’s borders.
“It is not difficult to discern that Conservative voters are not where their leadership is on many of the issues that their voter base holds dear. Even around four in ten Labour voters take a ‘conservative’ position on these issues.”
The poll was commissioned by Lady McAlpine, a top donor to the Conservative Party, who said of the results: “A tougher approach to trans issues, and a softening of net zero policies both poll well with Tory loyalists and the general public. But the game-changing issue for the [Conservative] party is immigration. The first step to avoiding electoral wipeout is to slash immigration.”
Lady McAlpine said that the party needs to “find the Churchillian quantities of courage” to champion the issues voters actually care about “no matter how loud the establishment screams”.