Mass migration is driving a new post-pandemic politics

 Last year’s net inward migration figures for the UK were revised up yesterday from 606,000 to 745,000. Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, called them “a slap in the face to the British public”. 

So what? This was obtuse even by Braverman’s standards. If the new numbers were a slap it was administered by the government of which she was a leading member until last week. In fact she was one of four ministers directly responsible for it.

Braverman’s through-the-looking-glass response is best understood in the context of Brexit, but also as part of a post-pandemic politics that

• rejects internationalism;
• mistrusts all public spending and provision; 
• sees mass migration as a defining and alarming feature of the global landscape; and
• helps make sense of the simultaneous triumphs of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands Javier Milei, owner of five cloned mastiffs named after radical right-wing economists, in Argentina.

UK migration. There are three things to note about the new numbers from the Office for National Statistics:

• Even though net inward migration is now running at more than seven times the limit the Conservatives set themselves in 2016, it’s almost entirely legal.
• It’s in line with new immigration policies introduced in 2021 to take advantage of Brexit.
• These policies included an end to free movement for EU citizens; special provision for refugees from Hong Kong and Ukraine; new rules for work visas for specific sectors including health and social care; and limited provision for non-EU student visa-holders to be joined in the UK by their dependents. 

A good thing too. Starved of workers by a pre- and post-Brexit exodus and straining to rebound after Covid, the UK needs immigration. Labour shortages have “held down growth and boosted inflation” since the pandemic, as Paul Dales of Capital Economics tells the FT. 

Small boats. Even so, the government has boxed itself into a corner on immigration from which it will spend what time remains until the election fighting its way out, starting with a renewed and almost certainly futile assault on the proportionally tiny number of migrants (fewer than one in 16) arriving illegally across the Channel in small boats. 

Big votes. Why? Because of an idée fixe on the populist right that nothing mobilises voters like scapegoating immigrants. This idea is not well-supported by opinion polls in the UK, but populists are proving adept at casting their net wide for evidence.

Exhibit 1: the Netherlands. The Dutch people “can’t take it any more,” said Wilders on the campaign trail, echoing deliberately or not the iconic line from Network. He was referring to inward migration, which rose to 220,000 last year, higher per capita than in the UK. His promise to bring it down resonated above all in rural Holland, helping his PVV party win a stunning 37 of 150 seats in parliament. He wants to leave the EU, but in practice tough limits would have to be imposed on non-EU migration because 80 per cent of the Dutch people want to stay in the union. That would still suit Wilders, who toned down his anti-Muslim rhetoric for the election but remains at heart an Islamophobe. 

Exhibit 2: Hungary. Continuously in power for 13 years, Viktor Orban lost an ally on the EU’s xenophobic right flank when progressives prevailed in Poland’s election last month. But he has since doubled down, asking Hungarians in a grandiose public “consultation” if they want to accept EU migration policies and allow “migrant ghettos to be created in our country”.

Argentina: a separate show. Migration is not Milei’s immediate concern. Economic collapse is. To dig out from under it he proposes to 

• abolish the central bank;
• privatise healthcare;
• cut pensions;
• sell off state assets;
• slash public spending; and
• replace the peso with the dollar.

This is a recipe for disaster, not recovery. Milei’s elevation to the presidency reflects a collapse of public trust in the state. He sounds mad in the Anglo sense but his voters are mad in the American sense, and that is what he has in common with the rest of the populist right. Centrists the world over have done spectacularly badly at discerning public anger and responding to it, and they don’t have long to raise their game. The next EU elections are in June.

Further listening: Trendy, “Immigration: have we taken back control?”
Further reading: UK Supreme Court kills off Rwanda deportation scheme