Oh please, Brexit really was not a Russian plot

But the Tories’ failure to tackle immigration certainly could harm our democracy

Public anxiety over immigration dominated the vote for Brexit. Since the referendum, a growing number of studies have shown that people who felt anxious about the impact of immigration on Britain were not only more likely to back Leave but were also more likely to play down the risk of Brexit and turn out to vote. Immigration was not the only concern that motivated Leavers, but it was by far the most powerful.

This phenomenon wasn’t limited to Leavers. Almost half of those who voted Remain also felt that the number of people coming to Britain was “too high”. Yet since the referendum there has been political denial of this fact. Though identity trumped economics in the referendum campaign, economics has consistently trumped identity in the post-referendum debate. The latest, hysterical, twist on this denial is the suggestion that Leavers could not possibly have willingly voted as they did, but were actually manipulated by Russian “bots” on Twitter ahead of the referendum. This is a desperate fantasy.

A research paper at the universities of Swansea and California, Berkeley suggests that accounts based in Russia sent more than 45,000 messages about Brexit, although 39,000 of these were posted on June 24, after voting had finished, and of those sent before the vote some encouraged people to vote Remain. Other research on the 2,752 Kremlin-linked accounts suspended by Twitter, mainly in response to events in the US, suggests that around 420 tweeted about Brexit, but “mostly after the referendum had taken place”.

The idea that Twitter bots somehow subverted weak-minded Britons is further undermined by the recent finding that a mere 1per cent of people, when polled, name Twitter as the news source they were most likely to rely on for accurate news. How this handed Leave a winning margin of more than one million votes, I don’t know.

Back in the land of reality, what really mattered – public angst over immigration – will not evaporate simply because Britain has voted to leave the EU. In fact, if anything there are good reasons to expect this to intensify unless serious reform is pursued.

Contrary to hysterical claims that Britain would witness a “Brexodus”, as EU nationals flee these islands, it turns out that the number of EU-employed migrants has actually gone up, to a record of almost 2.4million. One of the sharpest increases recorded was for Romanians and Bulgarians, who also happen to be the least popular EU migrants among voters.

Voters won’t simply shrug their shoulders and move on to other issues. Anxiety over immigration is bleeding into other issues, notably the NHS and housing. Last week, analysis of official statistics suggested that 80 per cent of households created in England between 2000 and 2015 were headed by someone who was foreign-born. Such findings will only strengthen an association in people’s minds between immigration and a cluster of social policy problems: housing, healthcare, cuts and inequality.

Official projections now forecast that Britain’s population is set to increase from nearly 66million today to 70million by 2029. Yet these estimates from the Office for National Statistics rest on the assumption that net migration will actually lower to 165,000 per year. In reality it is 246,000, and this is unlikely to fall without reform.

British voters have consistently been misled on immigration, from dodgy estimates about how many EU nationals would arrive after 2004, to David Cameron’s ill-fated promise to return net migration to the tens of thousands. This had major consequences, not only pushing many Conservative and Labour voters into the arms of Ukip, but also laying the foundation for Brexit. Such serial betrayals have also lowered trust in the political system. Can Britain afford not to meet this concern head on?

It is a question that is especially pressing for a Conservative Party that emerged from the 2017 general election even more dependent on working-class voters and non-graduates who instinctively oppose immigration. Ukip is weak, but the space it filled is still clearly visible. Restoring public confidence and trust on this issue should be a priority, by coming up with a clear plan to reform policy and – at least in the short term – demonstrate a clear ability to curb numbers. Failure to do so will not only damage the Conservative Party but our democracy, too.