Migrations is too high chants the UK government: net migration rose to a whopping 606,000 last year, they sob. What they don’t tell us is that’s about the number of international students studying in the UK at present, most of whom will return home at the end of their studies, after contributing £40 billion to the economy.
Nor do they tell us that in years without multiple humanitarian crises significantly more people leave the UK than come in, or that one-fifth of British people live abroad permanently, over a million of them in EU countries.
The difference between inbound and outbound migration is only fifty-thousand — and this in a period during which 163,500 Ukrainian refugees were taken in. Without an influx of people from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong, inbound migration would actually be much lower than outbound movement.
Nor do we learn that there are 2.5 million people of British ancestry in New Zealand, 10 million in Australia and in Canada, 34 million in the United States, and hundreds of thousands more elsewhere. Why is migration such a hot potato in the UK, when it is so evidently a natural part of the human experience — and, indeed, of the British story?
Meanwhile, public service recruitment is in such a perilous state of crisis, that human resources departments nationwide have set up teams dedicated to attracting staff from overseas. Yet even this is proving difficult, because overseas migrants are quickly realising that the cost of living far outstrips the benefit of their apparently better UK wage.
Yes, strong rhetoric on immigration is everywhere a vote winner. But possibly not with this electorate who, unable to tell the difference between Hindus and Muslims, and having voted for Brexit to keep the Muslim out, are reeling from the usurpation of power by the current unelected administration.
For that reason alone, they will see a vast exodus of votes. Yes, that’s sort of related to immigration too. Just not the immigration they have in mind. Because what they haven’t seemed to have cottoned onto yet is that, yes, it’s basically all about racism, and nothing to do with economics.
Great Britain’s greatest export, after all, was white supremacy, and it’s the last British invention we still believe in.
Last modified: 25 May 2023