Sunak Must Cut Immigration Or Lose The Next Election

'The choice facing him is an obvious no-brainer: to bring down immigration or to bring down himself.'

Stuart Mitchell/@IncMonocle

The people who regarded our departure from the European Union as unthinkable and considered Brexiteers a tiny rump of Little Englanders have been peddling a new theory in recent years.

It is that the British people have become comfortable with very high levels of immigration and the issue has therefore been marginalised in our politics, or “lost salience” to use their lecture room jargon.

Take James Kirkup, the highly-regarded director of the Social Market Foundation think tank. In May he commented: “Immigration exceeded one million in the year to March 2022. And voters were quite content about that: concern about immigration remains extremely low.”

As recently as October Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think tank, went even further, claiming that Liz Truss could take the British public with her if she pushed on with plans to raise immigration to an even higher level.

“Voices in government who want to bring back a focus on getting immigration numbers down may be…out of touch,” he added. I could cite many more examples, but you get the idea.

There is only one problem with this analysis: it is completely wrong. The likes of Kirkup and Katwala are basing their conclusions on a superficial reading of polling evidence.

There has indeed been an increase in the percentage of the population that is relaxed about high net immigration – Ipsos found earlier this year that 22 per cent of voters would be happy to see it go higher compared to just nine per cent who said that in spring 2016. Meanwhile 42 per cent said they wanted it reduced, compared to 62 per cent at the time of the EU referendum.

But digging just a little deeper shows why this analysis is so flawed, certainly from the point of view of a Tory Government that would like to get re-elected in 2024. Looking at 2016 Leave voters and 2019 Tory voters, as YouGov does in sub-samples of its regular issues tracker poll, tells a strikingly different story.

Among both groups – and remember these are the key sections of the electorate the Conservatives need to pin down rather than seeking to please open borders leftists who will never vote for them anyway – anxiety about immigration and asylum is soaring.

Among Leavers, it is now rated second in importance overall, just five points behind the top issue of the economy. It is nineteen points above the state of the NHS in third place. On current trends it could even eclipse economic woes before the end of the year as the number one issue.

A similar story emerges among 2019 Tory voters – including in those Red Wall seats that delivered the Conservatives their landslide majority. They also now rate immigration easily the second most important issue facing the country and again it is on a rapid upward path as a source of anxiety.

Yet if you click on YouGov’s “all adults” button to just look at the overview then these trends are obscured and you do indeed see a gradual decline in the salience of immigration as an issue, from a peak in August 2015.

This can only mean one thing: it is people who voted Remain in 2016 and for left-wing parties in 2019 who are becoming ever-more relaxed about high immigration and that is obscuring rocketing anxiety among 2016 Leavers and 2019 Tories.

So Rishi Sunak has a big decision to make very soon: does he base his re-election strategy on winning general approval as regards immigration policy from people who are most unlikely to vote Tory?

Or, on the other hand, should he decide to deliver instead for those who backed his party last time and voted Leave in the referendum but are now incandescent about the volume of immigration, both legal and illegal?

Put that way, the choice facing him is an obvious no-brainer: to bring down immigration or to bring down himself.