Nigel Farage can congratulate himself. His party did well in recent local elections; but so did the Liberal Democrats and Reform’s support may not last. What he can be especially pleased about is to have reduced the leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties to quivering jelly: terrified that their supporters will abandon them unless they are fed a diet of dog-whistle slogans and impractical but draconian-sounding immigration policies.
The Conservatives’ odd Soviet era obsession with planning targets for net immigration comfortably meets Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. They somehow fail to have noticed that the statistics on net migration are largely meaningless: massively inflated by overseas students who are wrongly counted as immigrants.
The Labour government’s proposals by contrast have some perfectly sensible bits. Who would seriously quarrel with the idea that policy should aim to maximise the contribution immigrants make to the UK? Or with the idea that employers should cease regarding immigrants as an excuse for not training their British labour force. There are no numerical targets: good. But why spoil it with demagogic dog-whistles about ‘an island of strangers’ or Brexit bromides about ‘taking back control’ or – worst – denouncing liberal immigration as ‘squalid’.
The political debate would benefit from more reflection on the history of immigration politics, survey data on public attitudes and rigorous research on the impacts of immigration. I have tried to pull together this material in a Working Paper for ODI/Global.
Immigration panics are not new. At the turn of the 20th century, the populist Tory MP, William Evans-Gordon, led a movement to stop Jewish immigration from – mainly – Russia. Crime, disease, stealing jobs: the usual. The Balfour government was panicked into the 1905 Aliens Act whose institutionalised antisemitism so disgusted Winston Churchill that he left the Tories for the Liberals.
In 1968 another populist anti-immigration Tory MP, Enoch Powell, made apocalyptic warnings about ‘coloured’ immigration. Public anxiety panicked the Labour government shortly afterwards into stripping Asian refugees from Kenya of their British citizenship (including my late wife’s relatives). With hindsight, Powell was uncannily accurate in his demographic predictions (currently over 8 million self-identify as ‘non-white’, around 12.5% of the population.). But he was wildly inaccurate in his predictions of the consequences. The Thames and other British rivers are not foaming with blood. (as opposed to sewage).
IPSOS and British Election Study survey data on public attitudes suggests that public opinion on the issue is volatile. It also suggests that the public consistently overestimates the scale of the immigrant (and ‘non-white’) population by a factor of over two. One paradox however is that the proportion of the public who think ‘there is too much immigration’ has fallen steadily as immigration numbers have risen. Another consistent trend is a rise in the proportion who think that immigration has been good for the country: economically and through diversity. Only 5% would object to having an immigrant family next door.
Younger people are generally more tolerant than the old as are those who are more directly exposed to immigrant communities. And there is a good story about the steady residential desegregation of immigrant communities and social mobility through education especially for those of Bangladeshi, African, Indian and Chinese heritage (less so for Caribbean and Pakistani backgrounds)
But host community attitudes are contradictory. Many people feel broadly positive about immigration but want less. Large majorities support refugee protection but strongly object to admitting ‘illegal’ refugees who have risked their lives in small boats to get here. Most would prefer to have well paid British workers picking fruit or providing social care but would object to higher fruit prices or higher council tax to better remunerate care workers. Such confusion leads to populist politics and bad policy.
Economic research gives a little more clarity. Immigration boosts growth but growth per head (that is, living standards) only slightly. Immigrants contribute overall more in tax than they take out in public services and benefits but not unskilled migrants. Immigrant workers do not in general impact on British wages and jobs since their jobs are complementary rather than competitive. The biggest impact of large net immigration is on the housing market: good for homeowners; not for renters and buyers.
The Labour government has clearly signalled that an era of relatively liberal immigration is ending. Like other Western democracies we are turning inward. That is a legitimate democratic choice. But there are consequences, and the government has a duty to spell them out.
Applying ‘cold turkey’ to low-skilled immigration is a body blow to the care sector. British families will have to start looking after their own incontinent and demented grannies and grandads; not leave them in care homes. They will have to get used to more self-service and longer queuing in the hospitality sector. They will have to get used to shortages of people who do the dirty jobs ensuring regular bin collection., sweeping up litter and cleaning public loos. And Buy British food will cost more. Many firms which rely on immigrant workers will go out of business.
As for universities unable to recruit overseas students paying high fees, they should expect deeper cuts in staff and departments. British students will have to pay much higher fees or lower their expectations of tertiary education. Universities in unfashionable ‘left-behind’ places may disappear.
As for the ’illegal’ ‘boat people’, a very visible but small addition to the numbers, we may need get used to paying the French more to help reduce trafficking. And accept that, nonetheless, more refugees will drown by being forced into riskier routes. Or perhaps they will be sent them back to a vengeful Taliban or the Iranian mullahs. Stronger stomachs will be needed.
The government should not be so naïve as to expect Nigel’s merry men to say ‘well done and thank you’. They will be vindicated and move on, strengthened, to a new set of grievances.
* Sir Vince Cable is the former MP for Twickenham and was leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2017 until 2019. He also served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills from 2010 to 2015.
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22 Comments
For migrants without English Language bring back ESOL classes.These were classes where migrants could go to night school to learn English. It is there SKILLS we need seeing we are incapable of training our own.Equally ‘our own’ could turn out to be inadequate for the economies needs.
Why should the taxpayer pay for ESOL lessons. They should learn English before they come. There isn’t an unlimited pool of taxpayer money.
According to YouGov more Liberal Democrat voters supported Starmer’s speech than opposed it.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2025/05/13/b638b/2
Results for Liberal Democrat Voters.
I agree with the sentiment, and take no issue with the language = 36%
I agree with the sentiment, but don’t think the language was appropriate = 21%
I disagree with the sentiment, but take no issue with the language = 10%
I disagree with the sentiment, and don’t think the language was appropriate = 18%
Don’t know = 15%
The impact on the care sector will be horrendous. And if families suddenly start looking after relatives who were previously in care homes then that will increase the demand for careworkers, not reduce it.
Social services and health professionals aim to keep people in their own homes but that has to be supported by careworkers. My guess is that the careworker to client ratio is higher for home care than for residential, even though the overall costs are lower.
If someone is in a care home then they have a higher level of need and can’t simply be transferred back into the care of their relatives.
Just a comment about those arriving in small boats – I don’t believe most people who vote for Reform want them returned to Afghanistan or any other unsafe country. They would want them returned to the safe country they recently left….France.
We need to be careful that the Liberal Democrats do not appear to support the illegal entry to the UK of economic migrants.
@Mary Reid: The impact on the care sector will be horrendous. TOO TRUE
After commenting on my visit to an end-of- care home where ALL carers I met except an Irish team leader, were from abroad, today I had an appointment at Kingston Hospital, where the doctor from the Philippines was alarmed at plans for stopping foreign workers from joining the health service. She said: “I pay my 40% tax”.
The two nurses in the department were also from the Philippines and we conversed: “Comestas”, “ma booty’’. I then said one of my heroes was Jose Rizal, who fought with the pen not the sword.
A man responsible for safety said he was from Clarendon in Jamaica, the parish where my daughter-in-law comes from.
Picking up medicine from my pharmacist, who was Iranian, his assistant was a Tamil from Jaffna in the beautiful but sad island of Sri Lanka.
My father was Irish. WE immigrants have all contributed to Britain. I ask Starmer, where did your family come from? I hope the Albanians will tell him that they want to be European and have nothing to do with his evil immigration plans.
Well commented, John W!
Might the data given in a comment above be from an “All Adults” sample rather than an L. D. sample?
Might this article be relevant?
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/05/14/starmer-is-destroying-the-nhs/
Might the callous misinformation about/against immigrants from main stream media outlets be distorting perceptions and attitudes?
https://research.ethicalconsumer.org/research-hub/addressing-subtle-forms-of-anti-migrant-hate-2022
Might “weather vane” politicians be attacking immigrants to hide from and divert us from the real causes for our society’s malfunction and cruelty to regular people and their children?
https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/cs-true-cost-austerity-inequality-uk-120913-en_0.pdf
The point about students makes no sense. If students are only here temporarily – that is, to study – then they will contribute -1 to the net figures when they leave, so essentially they will cancel themselves out and not be counted anyway. A student who stays on long-term to work will of course continue to count in the figures. Why shouldn’t they?
The idea that immigration targets are Soviet-esque and impossible to achieve is equally odd given some of the countries that have been implementing targets and quotas for many years; countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The last of these even has a quota for refugees. Canada – which Lib Dems were celebrating as a Liberal Utopia just the other week – controls immigration numbers for reasons of “housing supply”, “economic and regional needs”, “processing capacity” and “the capacity to settle and integrate”, according to their government website. Many British people would regard this as sensible and welcome such an approach from our own government.
On the subject of “dog whistles” perhaps Vince has forgotten the Lib Dems’ own rhetoric when he was deputy leader during the 2010 election campaign, when the party tried to justify its plan for regional immigration caps by claiming there wasn’t enough drinking water in parts of the country (mainly the South East) to support more migrants. Imagine the outrage if a Reform politician said such a thing today.
According to the iPaper today: ‘The stretched health budget faces absorbing millions of pounds more in migrant visa fees under Home Office plans to hike the cost of hiring from overseas.
Measures designed to cut the number of migrant workers will include an increase to the cost for employers to sponsor work visas.’
I have just read a piece by Ian Dunt on Striking 13 entitled’Thank God for immigrants’. I’m sorry I can’t provide a link but you can access Striking 13 free.
I only wish our leaders had the guts to say the same. I recommend you have a look.
You can get Ian Dunt’s piece on https://iandunt.substack.com
May be worth pointing out that part of the reason the Government is closing the care worker visa route for overseas applicants is that this visa scheme has widely been abused by agencies as a way to bring in people from poorer countries in order to exploit them. This article from last year explains the issues: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/02/what-are-the-problems-with-the-uk-visa-system-for-care-work.
Considering the LibDems have consistently argued that care workers should be better paid, you might think we’d welcome a change in immigration rules that is likely to mean care providers have to attract workers by paying better salaries.
One factor which is rarely mentioned in the immigration debate is the birth rate which has been falling significantly in recent decades.
The rate is now reported to be 1.44 per adult woman. The natural replacement rate needs to be 2.1 per woman.
If we aren’t collectively producing enough children of our own, who will later become productive workers in our economy, then we will need to accept an increased rate of immigration which is going to be inevitable and necessary to support an ageing population.
Voting Reform isn’t going to change the arithmetic!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnvj3j27nmro
@Peter: A birth rate of only 1.44 per adult women means that, if we are to maintain our population level, then we need a rate of net migration that is greater than zero. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we need migration to be as high as it currently is. On the contrary , the fact that, even despite our low birth rate, our population has gone up from 62.8M in 2010 to 69.6M today (an 11% rise in just 15 years) shows that current immigration levels are far higher than needed for that purpose. So I don’t think low birth rate stacks up as an argument against the need to reduce immigration levels to something below what they currently are.
@ Simon,
You are right in terms of the numbers. If we are short of 0.66 babies per mother the number of immigrants to keep a stable population needs to be about 400,000 pa which is slightly more than we used to have in EU days. Many would say this is too high a number too.
It would perhaps take some of the heat out of the political debate if we did have a policy on population levels. Those who wanted a lower population would have to accept a higher retirement age and perhaps being expected to fend for themselves in old age.
We can’t have everything.
We can also use the low birth rate to show that having children is something we all have a vested interest in regardless of whether we have them ourselves. Society does have to offer the necessary support. A typical British argument is that children are the sole responsibility of parents which I find annoying. Whenever I hear some male person expressing such views I ask them how they know they don’t have extra children themselves! They generally do get stuck for an answer!
I have been watching a programme called ‘DNA Family Secrets’ and I learned something about the postwar Labour government that I had not even suspected. In Late 1945 a special committee , which must have included ministers, decided to forcibly deport Chinese men who had come to the UK to help the British War effort and in many cases had settled down and started families. There were many families who suddenly found that their husband/father had suddenly vanished, never to be heard of again.
Labour really has form on this kind of thing. Chinese men in 1945, the Kenya Immigrants bill in 1968, Hong Kong in 1997 and now Starmer’s anti migrant rhetoric and proposed act of parliament in 2025. [I’m sure I’ve missed other stuff]
I read on Blue Sky recently, that Labour cabinet ministers in 1968 knew that the Kenya Immigrants bill was racist and that it was counter to the UK’s economic interests but they thought it would help them win the next election. They lost to Ted Heath.
Their current policy is another example of following the same policy again and again, but hoping this time you get different results. [Einstein’s definition of insanity I think]
Liberals have always stood out against these racist, economically illiterate and inhumane policies. I do hope we’re going to continue to speak out now.
@Mick: The 1945-6 forced deportation of Chinese men from Liverpool, as you say, often leaving families not knowing why loved ones disappear, was absolutely awful (for anyone who doesn’t know about it: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/may/25/chinese-merchant-seamen-liverpool-deportations. But I really don’t understand how you can make out it’s in any way similar to the Starmer Government’s immigration changes. It isn’t: The Government today is not proposing to deport people secretly – in fact, other than people convicted of actual crimes, it’s not proposing to deport anyone at all: It’s merely changing the rules in ways intended to reduce the numbers of new people coming to the UK. And given that immigration levels are absurdly high (something that wasn’t the case in 1945), even many liberals would argue something like that is unavoidable.
Also, the secret Liverpool deportations were – well, secret! Few people in politics knew about them. We’ll never know what the political reaction would have been if they had been open knowledge, so you can’t really claim that liberals opposed them but Labour (as a whole, as opposed to, just a few ministers) supported it/
@ Mick,
Simon makes a fair point about the deportation of the Chinese seamen. It was a stain on the otherwise commendable record of the Attlee govt. It is hard to know what they were thinking. If it had been simple racism they wouldn’t have given full British citizenship to all of the Commonwealth.
I did look for a record of who had supported the Chinese workers but I couldn’t find anything other than a reference to some earlier support from the Communist Party in this excellent account of the events.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/may/25/chinese-merchant-seamen-liverpool-deportations
I was making three points.
1. When Labour have a choice on immigration, they make the wrong, often racist one and the one which makes no economic sense.
2. Liberals were the only people to oppose changes to immigration based on race, in 1962 (Commonwealth Immigration Act – Tories) and 1968 (Kenya Immigration Act – Labour). the refusal to allow Hong Kong passport holders to come to the UK and just about every move on immigration since. Had the Chinese deportations not been a secret I imagine Liberals would have opposed them too.
3. It may be true that the post war Labour government gave commonwealth citizens British passports, but few would have been able to make use of them at the time. They were quick enough to clamp down on those passport holders when they did want to use them.
@ Mick Taylor,
“Liberals were the only people to oppose changes to immigration based on race…” ??
That’s not actually true. Nearly all groupings to the left of the Labour Party and many on the left of Labour too opposed them too.
On the subject of British politicians and racial prejudice, I remember from my very young days the treatment of Seretse Khama by both the Attlee government and the following Churchill government. Mick is (?) possibly old enough to remember too ? A quick Look at Wiki gives the details.
Having said that, no party or government is absolutely clear of guilt. The Gladstone and Trevelyan slavery connections are on record as is the Churchill wartime coalition links to the Bombay famine. LLG’s association with the Black and Tans in 1921 doesn’t bear scrutiny nor does the Asquith government Irish executions in 1916.
We live in ever changing times and politics can be a messy old business.
Gladstone/Trevelyan links to slavery are on record
While agreeing with the benefits of immigration and controlled asylum, this should not be at the expense of creating opportunities for our home born. Every person born in these islands deserves the right to an adequate education, access to a personalised career or other life pathway and the ability to build a pension for their retirement. There is no reason why both cannot co-exist but to emphasise one at the cost of the other is wrong.