Mass immigration will never be a vote winner

Some Tories suggest that relaxing their stance on migrants could broaden their appeal. It will not

Adangerous received wisdom is developing in the Conservative Party. To appeal to younger and more liberal voters, the thinking goes, the Tories need to become more relaxed about mass immigration.

Part of the logic for this argument is the startling discovery that public opinion has become more positive about immigration since the Brexit referendum: overall, more people say they feel better about it than two years ago. But the same research shows that a large majority of voters – 60 per cent – still want the number of people coming to Britain reduced.

As Bobby Duffy, the pollster from Ipsos MORI, explains, the shift in opinion is caused by Brexit itself. Liberal remainers, who were always positive about immigration, are now more vehement in their support, while some immigration sceptics are reassured by the referendum result and assume greater immigration

control is coming. To interpret this change as a green light for continued mass immigration would therefore be a mistake.

As Ipsos MORI point out, historical studies show “there are always 60+ per cent who want immigration reduced”. And support for reduced and controlled immigration is shared across the whole country. It is true that younger voters have relatively more liberal views than older people, but even among 18 to 24-year-olds, more people believe immigration is too high than think it should continue at its current rate or increase further. Clear majorities of people want immigration reduced not just in Wales, the Midlands and the north of England but in London and Scotland, too.

As ministers contemplate a new immigration system for Britain after Brexit – when we will be able to control the number of people who come here from Europe – they must remember these facts. But as well as public opinion, ministers must also consider the actual effects of immigration.

Bringing educated and skilled migrants to Britain clearly benefits our economy. That is why nobody credible argues that immigration should be reduced to zero. We need a coherent strategy and a well-run system to deliver selective immigration, not mass immigration.

There is no evidence that mass immigration makes us better off. In fact, academic studies suggest it makes little economic difference overall. According to the OECD, it has no fiscal effect at all. And while it increases the size of our economy, it only does so by increasing the size of the population: on a per-person basis, studies show the effect is probably neutral. For some workers, however, the effects of immigration are negative.

Although there is no fixed number of jobs in the economy – an idea economists reject as the “lump of labour” fallacy – there is evidence that mass immigration can force down wages for workers with fewer skills, and squeeze some people out of the labour market altogether.

When the pace of change is too great, it can also put pressure on infrastructure and services. The Housing Minister, Dominic Raab, was mocked recently for saying immigration has pushed up house prices, but official figures show that immigration is behind more than a third of the increased demand for housing in England. Supporters of immigration are right to point out that the NHS depends on foreign workers, but surgeries and hospitals can struggle when the local population increases quickly. And so, too, can the school system: due to immigration and high birth rates among migrant mothers, England needs 650,000 new school places by 2026.

Having fallen short in last year’s election, the Tories do need to build a new coalition of voters that can give them majorities in Parliament. With the return of two-party politics, that means they need to get up to perhaps 44 per cent of the vote, rather than the 37 per cent that gave them a narrow majority in 2015, or the 36 per cent that gave Tony Blair an enormous majority in 2005. This implies that they need to make further inroads into Labour’s working class heartlands in the Midlands and the north of England, without alienating younger and more liberal voters.

This is a tricky balancing act, but giving up and accepting mass immigration as inevitable would be a bad mistake. Leave voters see immigration control as one of the main benefits of Brexit. A consistently large majority of voters want immigration reduced. And no fewer than 84 per cent of people who voted Conservative in 2017 say they think the current rate of immigration is too high.

In part it was the belief that – unlike Labour – the Tories really do want to control immigration that caused working class voters to start defecting from Labour to the Conservatives. But their support for the Tories is not unconditional. If they feel betrayed by the Government, they will abandon the Tories just as they abandoned Labour. And if that happens, Conservative MPS will not have to worry about hung parliaments, but life in opposition. They need to tread very carefully.

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