Well Argued.

JOSH GLANCY

Liberals have lost the argument on migration

To stave off the far right, tough decisions must be made, and made soon

Josh Glancy

Sunday December 01 2024, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Times

‘If liberals won’t enforce borders, fascists will.” Say what you like about the American writer David Frum, whom history will remember as the man behind George W Bush’s “axis of evil” speech, but he certainly knows how to coin a pithy phrase. Frum wrote this line in an article for The Atlantic magazine in 2019, but it has stayed with me ever since.

It stayed with me because I’m a liberal. My family came to Britain as immigrants fleeing persecution. I live on about the most multicultural road in multicultural London. Migration is part of who I am. But I also think it is long past time we properly enforced our borders.

The fascist stuff is overblown, but Frum’s basically right, isn’t he? Liberals failed on migration in America, where Donald Trump is now returning to power to show them the price of their failure. And liberal-minded Tories failed in Britain too. New figures released last week revealed the scale of their blunder.

Having already revised its previous figures upwards (never an encouraging sign), the Office for National Statistics now informs us nearly a million people came to Britain in 2022-23. We added 2.2 million people between 2021 and 2023. These numbers are not sustainable.

When my own family arrived in Britain, at the very end of the 19th century, they were part of a migration wave that brought about 200,000 Jews here, mostly fleeing Russian pogroms. That wave took place over half a century — between 1870 and 1914 — yet in the past year alone about a quarter of a million Indian migrants came to Britain. A similar number arrived the previous year. And the year before that. In the same three-year period 300,000 Nigerians arrived in Britain. Nearly 300,000 Chinese people came too. And approaching 200,000 people from Pakistan. Again, not sustainable.

I really do believe immigration can work. I believe the liberal clichés that migrants can enrich a society, working hard and injecting dynamism and diversity into the body politic. But clearly immigration is not working in Britain today. One cannot reasonably expect our creaking health and welfare systems to bear this current strain. Housing and supporting asylum seekers alone is now costing our impecunious state £5.4 billion a year.

Nor can one simply dismiss as bigots those who argue that migration of this speed and scale represents a threat to the character and culture of our country. According to YouGov, 68 per cent of people think net migration has been “too high” over the past decade and just 15 per cent think it’s been “about right”. The majority of people in Britain are not bigots.

In 2019 Boris Johnson, the prime minister, told us he wanted to “restore democratic control” of immigration policy after leaving the EU and “assure the public we have control over the number of unskilled immigrants coming into the country”.

In reality, though, many of these new migrants are not highly skilled. Many have come to do underpowered master’s degrees. Many are driving for Uber or Deliveroo, drawing low wages so that middle-class brats like me can order spicy yellowtail maki at the swipe of a button.

I bear not a shred of resentment towards these new neighbours of mine. They have taken advantage of perfectly legal visa processes to come in search of an improved life. Nor do I resent those who are determined enough to cross the stormy Channel to claim asylum here, even if some of them are really just looking for jobs. This is an expression of a profound human longing for better opportunities. It is who we are and it will never cease.

But it is our job, as an advanced country, to strike the right balance between our liberal values and the burden this migration places on the state and our society.

We are failing to do this. Failing badly. And too many of us are still unwilling to admit the depth of this failure. Instead of mumbling pieties about how foreign students are propping up our university system, or how the NHS runs on immigrant labour, it is time to acknowledge that the system is fundamentally broken and needs a complete overhaul. And that until this happens, Nigel Farage will continue to play an outsize role in our politics.

Radical and painful decisions need to be made. Money must be spent on processing asylum claims. Visa rules for students and dependants must be tightened further. Offshoring deals like the one Italy has struck with Albania must be explored — even if in Italy’s case EU law is proving obstructive. Wads of cash should be given to Middle East despots to tackle migration at source. And we should be talking to our friends in Paris and Berlin about how to loosen the European convention on human rights for the age of migration.

At times this will cost money, because bribing foreign governments is expensive and sectors of our economy have become addicted to the sugar high of cheap imported labour. At times it will look like an inhumane rejection of British values, a betrayal of “who we are”. But it won’t be. It will be the opposite of that. Because if liberals don’t enforce borders, then fascists will. Or if not fascists, then people like Trump, who care little for niceties and due process.

The good news, I think, is that Keir Starmer does appear to genuinely grasp some of this. Responding to last week’s ONS figures, he gave an intriguing press conference in which he castigated the Tories for “turning Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders”, and doing so “by design, not accident”.

Politically convenient, no doubt, but it was also a clear statement of intent. Immigration isn’t one of Labour’s vaunted “five missions”, but it is now right near the top of the prime minister’s agenda. It was notable that he also sidled up to Farage in the House of Commons last week, for a conspicuous and friendly chat.

Starmer’s top political adviser, Morgan McSweeney, seems acutely aware that bringing net migration under control is an essential task. Just last week a deal was struck with Iraq to help crack down on people-smuggling gangs. The question is, will they go far enough: can Starmer and Labour embrace the radicalism required to effect real change?

None of this is very cuddly or very pleasant. But it is necessary to protect our society’s liberal character and freedoms. In a turbulent and interconnected world, a reasonably high level of immigration to Britain is inevitable. But it does not need to be anywhere near as high as it is now. Starmer is correct that the present situation was, in large part, a choice. It is time to make a different one. ST.