Why immigration won it for Brexit

Immigration is mostly a good thing, and the countries and empires that allow it and deal with it do the best in history (although, we should always remember that the migration of talent from poor countries to rich countries can have a devastating effect on the future of those poor countries).

Immigration built America into one of the greatest nations the world has ever seen in just a few centuries (probably best not to ask actual Native Americans what they think of immigration though, as it destroyed their 10,000 year old culture).

But immigration has downsides that need to be acknowledged and dealt with. While immigration benefits the economy as a whole, most of the benefits go to the middle classes (e.g. cheaper home extensions), and most of the costs hit the working classes (e.g. pay-rates in construction trades dropping by 50 per cent).

The current level of immigration is unprecedented. Whenever something is unprecedented, it’s worth paying attention. The rate of demographic change is remarkable: 27 per cent of UK-born babies are born to mothers born outside of the UK; in London *most* babies are.

This number was 12-13 per cent for decades, but has surged since 1997 when the Labour government started loosening immigration rules, and is on an upward trajectory.

Tony Blair must also take some blame for choosing not to impose transitional controls when the eastern countries joined the EU in 2004, unlike every other country in Europe except Sweden and Ireland (neither of which were attractive to migrant workers).

It was a big misjudgement, as Chris Huhne said in 2008. “The scale of the error is breathtaking – actual immigration was 1,373 per cent higher than the forecast.”

Absorbing so many people into British culture will not be easy. One of major problems is that in many cities, ethnic ghettos have formed where cultural integration had stopped and even gone into reverse.

The 1990s vision of multicultural integration has been discarded to allow acceptance of, and even promotion of, these ghettos; a move that has been strongly condemned by the former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips.

For decades the biggest strain on housing was not from immigration but from decreasing family sizes, driven largely by the desire of the middle classes to live alone until their mid-30s and their ability to afford that.

In the last decade primary strain has changed, and it doesn’t take a genius to realise that if net immigration is 350,000 that will use up most of the annual new-build home count of 140,000, even if newcomers live four to a house (which they often do).

To make it worse, those same middle classes are also the most vociferous in opposing new housing as well!

I’m going to point the finger here particularly at the eco-left, who are proud to signal their tolerance by protesting with signs saying “refugees welcome” but have often spent the previous week arguing that both population growth and economic growth are bad things, and the week before that campaigning against the new roads and housing developments necessary to absorb immigration.

If you are in favour of something but against all of its consequences then you simply haven’t thought it through.

The nature of our benefits system continues to act as an immigration draw and source of perceived unfairness. The UK has mostly non-contributory benefits, which means that someone who has been here not very long and paid in little gets the same benefit amount as someone who has paid in for 30 years.

The intransigence of other EU countries to allow changes to eligibility to EU benefit laws to deal with this is because they have contributory benefit systems so the issue simply doesn’t affect them.

Those countries need to accept some blame for refusing to see how this issue affects the UK. The previous Labour government realised this was becoming a problem, and a commission was set up to look at increasing the contributory element in UK benefits, but it was dropped by Ed Miliband who thought it would be too unpopular with Labour members.

The thing is, in a globalised world you can have generous non-contributory benefits or you can have free migration, but you cannot plausibly have both.

The British Social Attitudes survey in 2013 found that 77 per cent of people think immigration is too high, 17 per cent about right, 4 per cent too low; while YouGov in 2015 found 75 per cent, 18 per cent, and 2 per cent respectively.

Those numbers have been stable for a decade. Concerns about immigration became a top issue under Labour during the boom, when it can’t be blamed on “austerity”.

Opposition to the current levels is so high that even if 95 per cent of Leave voters think immigration is too high, a majority of Remain voters must also think immigration is too high.

At some point we have to come to terms with majority opinion here, or honestly accept that we are no longer democrats in any serious sense of the word.

Policy is not binary: there are more options than just pulling up the draw-bridge or a full open-doors regime. It’s perfectly possible to be pro-immigrant and pro-refugee, but to want proper controls and management of both.

Immigration was obviously the single biggest vote winner for Leave (even though half of immigration is not from the EU). We simply won’t win back support for the EU until we get to grips with the numbers, because this sent millions of votes to Leave.

This is an excerpt from a longer blog which first appeared here. Mark Wright is a Lib Dem councillor for Hotwells & Harbourside

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