The government is the real villain

We do indeed have representative democracy in the U.K., the only problem is nobody has defined who the government represents.  The idea that the government represents the people is becoming increasingly untenable with every new instance where the government either ignores the people altogether, or uses applied psychology to manipulate the people into the government’s predetermined policy choice.

These games have been going on since time immemorial, but the state’s position on immigration is probably the clearest example where the so-called “elite” is ramming diversity down the throats of an unhappy electorate.  Polling data has to be treated with care, however the public’s view on immigration is remarkably consistent over long periods of time and the state’s refusal to act on that view is equally steadfast. 

The 2016 Brexit referendum was largely about immigration and the 2019 “let’s get Brexit done” election outcome was similarly related to immigration.  When looking at the question of immigration in isolation, long term IPSOS polling data¹ shows that those wanting to reduce immigration outnumber those wishing to increase it not by a few percentage points but by multiples of twofold to threefold.  The political class is obviously aware of these very clear views.  The reality is that consecutive governments have simply chosen to ignore this instruction.

In a more recent survey quoted by the Migration Observatory, there is an absolute majority of respondents who want to see migration reduced with 52% wishing to see a reduction in immigration (reduced a lot plus reduced a bit)².

Numerous “representative” governments in the U.K. have allowed net migration to steadily grow from almost nothing to a jaw dropping level of 764,000 in 2022.

The former Labour government advisor, Andrew Neather³, claimed that the Blair government wanted to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”.  This kind of contempt was also on display again under Gordon Brown when in 2010 Gordon Brown was caught in a hot mic incident dismissing a voter expressing concerns about immigration (and other issues) as a “bigoted woman”.  So Sir Keir Starmer’s knee jerk response to the disturbances following the terrible Southport incident, where he dismisses the malcontents as “far right” fits exactly in with the overall pattern of contempt.

In many ways the fake-Conservatives are much worse than Labour since they ramped-up net migration whilst simultaneously promising to reduce it.  In this instance the charge of duplicity needs to be added to the charge of contempt.

In a recent interview Priti Patel refuses to even express regret over the high migration levels and uses the laughable excuse that figures for recent years were a catch-up post COVID.  Looking at the chart you can see this is ludicrous since by the end of 2022 the migration level had more than compensated for the COVID reduction, resulting in a very large net increase.

Illegal immigration via small boats has been an even worse catastrophe than legal immigration with few signs of any abatement.  Small boat crossings were largely unheard of prior to 2020 and then grew to almost 46,000 in 2022.  Although there was some abatement in 2023, recent figures for 2024 are at levels higher than 2022 and at this rate 2024 will likely turn into a record year.

A related problem has been the slow processing of asylum claims in general (which will include many of the people from small boat crossing), this has created an enormous backlog of claims.  The current estimate is that there is a backlog of 95,000 asylum claims, for reference this figure is 20,000 higher than the U.K. army’s regular forces.  The costs of dealing with this backlog are astronomical for the taxpayer.

In addition to smearing people who are unhappy, Angela Rayner (a Minister in the Starmer government) just announced that planned restrictions on foreign nationals’ ability to access government funded social housing will be scrapped⁴.  Social housing in the U.K. is in very limited supply, so increasing access to foreign nationals will generally disadvantage indigenous citizens.  To make this announcement hot on the heels of riots and disorder related to excessive immigration is, in my view, inflammatory and adds to the resentment caused by Sir Keir Starmer’s “far right” smears.

Who do they represent

Immigration is probably the most obvious issue where the Westminster “elite” has simply overridden the wishes of the electorate.  They are now lowering the legal bar so that more and more elements of protest can be categorised by the state as crimes.  So you end up with a paradoxical situation where the state can potentially punish you if you express dissatisfaction with the State’s decision to ignore the electorate.

I want to be clear that although people have every right to be furious with the political class, they have no right to harass actual immigrants. As I mentioned in previous articles, “horizontal” division is being created to keep people fighting amongst themselves and ignoring the fact that it is the U.K. political class which bears sole responsibility for deliberately engineering excessive immigration. 

Solutions and in-person meeting

I occasionally get comments that we don’t offer constructive solutions, this is not correct, please see Substack article entitled “OK so give us some solutions” from 8^th March 2024.  I also repeatedly urge people to fund, join and volunteer for real libertarian political parties, particularly Heritage, who stood up to COVID tyranny when it mattered.

We will be focusing on the issue of constructive resistance at our in-person meeting at 6 p.m. on 27^th August 2024 at Heist Bank, near Paddington.  If you are a paying Patron, or Substack paying subscriber and would like to attend please contact info@thinkingcoalition.org to register.  

Let me have your thoughts below and please don’t forget to circulate our material and support our work, we have already had to suspend various parts of our activities due to lack of funding! 

Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial COVID model⁵, he is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach (www.thinkingcoalition.org)

1. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2023-09/unbound-british-future-immigration-tracker-2023-charts.pdf

2. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/

3. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

4. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/10/angela-rayner-social-housing-migrants-drop-restrictions/

5. https://twitter.com/ThinkingSlow1/status/1257578069797339137?s=20