Nearly half of the British public wants a total freeze on all non-essential immigration into the country, but do not trust either of the two main political parties to cut the number of foreigners allowed into the UK.
A survey conducted by the Centre for Migration Control has found that a plurality of the public agrees that “Britain should have a five-year freeze on all further immigration that is not essential to supporting the NHS”, with 32 per cent strongly agreeing and 17 per cent tending to agree, compared to 13 per cent who tended to disagree and 11 per cent who strongly disagreed.
Additionally, 58 per cent supported cutting legal net migration to the “tens of thousands” compared to just 17 per cent who disagreed, The Express reports.
However, there is widespread pessimism about the prospect of either the governing neo-liberal Conservative Party or the opposition left-wing Labour Party delivering on the priority of reducing mass migration, with the survey finding that 49 per cent of the people do not trust either major party to reduce immigration.
The distrust is unsurprising given Labour’s history of backing mass migration and the Conservative Party’s history of brazenly lying to the public on the issue, with the Tories allowing in the largest influx of foreigners in the history of the country despite previously pledging to the public to bring migration down to the “tens of thousands” in their 2010, 2015, and 2017 election manifestos, and promising that immigration would “come down” in the 2019 manifesto.
Arch-globalist Tory bigwig George Osbourne admitted in 2017 that the party never intended to reduce migration and that behind closed doors, party leadership had never agreed with the promises made to the public. Other top figures, be they Labour or Tory have admitted the same.
Robert Bates of the Centre for Migration Control said: “These figures lay bare the sheer disconnect that exists between Westminster and the British public. It is vital that immigration, and the huge numbers entering the country legally, are at the centre of the national debate in the coming weeks.”
The survey comes on the back of another staggering release of official immigration data, with net migration — the overall number of people coming to the country minus those who left — being recorded at 685,000 following the arrival of 1.2 million people.
While this is slightly lower than in 2022, it is unclear if this will remain so. Initially, the government pegged net migration at 606,000 for 2022, however, this was later revised to 745,000 in the autumn of 2023 and now further revised upwards to 764,000, the highest number on record.
Should the revisions follow the same trend for 2023, a new record may have already been set but the public will not be made aware of the true level of immigration until after the July 4th general election.
Since the election announcement by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week, neither the Tories nor the Labour Party appear intent on addressing the immigration concerns of the public despite the issue ranking only behind the economy and healthcare as the most pressing problem in voters’ minds.
With the leadership of both parties broadly subscribing to the neo-liberal economic perspective on migration — the GDP-focussed notion that unfettered waves of foreign labour is an unmitigated economic good if not a necessity — neither seems willing to take up the cause supported by the public, who feel the negative ramifications of mass migration more acutely than the political elites in London.
Instead, both the Tories and Labour seem content with battling the election on relatively niche subjects, with Labour using their opening week of the campaign to vow to make it easier to legally change one’s gender and to lower the voting age to 16 and Prime Minister Sunak rolling out an apparently ill-thought-out plan to reintroduce National Service as his opening gambit.
Commenting on the refusal by both parties to engage on the issue of migration, Brexit leader Nigel Farage said on Sunday: “It will not be debated in this election. Why? Because Labour started it and the Tories accelerated it. That has led to a problem on a scale unimaginable.
“If you want mass immigration, vote Conservative, if you want mass immigration, vote Labour.”
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