Immigration has been a fixture of Britain’s political discourse for so long, it now feels, like Voltaire’s god, that if the issue did not exist, we would have to invent it. What would our politics look like, what would the broad majority of Britain’s media do with themselves, without immigration? It has become such a feature of the country’s political culture, it amounts to a sort of historical exhibit: “rivers of blood”, the “hostile environment”, “go home” vans, “controls on immigration” crockery, the Brexit “breaking point” poster, the Windrush scandal, “stop the boats”, “island of strangers”. And now, summer riots.
What conjoins all of these is one thing: misinformation. I have banged on for years in this column about the disconnect between immigration discourse and the reality of how hard and expensive it is to enter the UK and stay there. A poll from last week demonstrates that gulf with striking simplicity. The conclusion to be drawn from the survey is that support for hardline immigration policies is linked to ignorance about migration figures. Half of all respondents thought that there were more migrants living in the UK illegally than legally. According to YouGov, these perceptions are “wide of the mark”, with those in the country legally vastly outnumbering those who are not, even at the most generous estimates of irregular migration.
