U.K. 2023 immigration statistics and electoral hara-kiri
U.K. 2023 immigration statistics and electoral hara-kiri
The U.K. election process got off to wet start last week when U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a 4th July 2024 general election under a downpour of rain. The next day the ONS released a number of immigration and visa issuance statistics for 2023, which did not provided much cover for the Conservatives.
The Conservative government has tried to spin the very high net migration (immigration less emigration) figure of 685,000 for 2023 as a “reduction”. This “reduction” actually represents a small claw back from the all-time high of over three quarters of a million reached in 2022 (764,000). It is difficult to believe that anyone could look at the chart below and see a reduction. There was of course some net migration catch-up from the very low levels seen during COVID, nonetheless it is apparent that net migration has roughly tripled over the past couple of years.
These figures are a far cry from the “tens of thousands”1 promised by David Cameron way back in 2010. Importantly, we are looking here only at legal immigration, which requires the issuance of relevant Home Office visas and so should be something the government can control.
A large part of the Brexit debate revolved around “taking back control”, particularly over U.K. borders when the U.K. could not legally limit immigration from EU member states. The only thing that seems to have been achieved since Brexit is to replace net migration from EU countries with high net migration from non-EU countries resulting in much higher overall net migration. The top-5 non-EU countries for immigration (the gross figure without emigration) to the U.K. are now;
The large increase in net migration has coincided with a significant reduction in the natural change of the U.K. population, defined as births minus deaths. The ONS provided an analysis of population growth in England and Wales over the eleven years to mid-2022 by category. As you can see below almost all population growth is now driven by net migration, although natural changes were depressed during the COVID period from 2020 to 2022.
The ONS also produces U.K. population projections which extrapolate the current trends and those also highlight the fact that nearly all future population growth is expected to come from net migration. Those projections are based on the assumption that net migration will fall to 315,000 per year, which is considerably lower than the actual levels seen in 2022 and 2023. Even with this optimistic assumption, 92% of all future U.K. population growth to mid-2036 (6.6 million in total) is expected to come from net international migration. With near 100% of incremental population growth coming from net migration, the share of non-UK born population will increase. The non-UK born population of England and Wales accounted for around 17% of total population at 2021, this level would likely increase by around 7% under the ONS population projection.
Does it matter?
The key considerations for net migration levels should be the integration achieved and the creation of medical, educational, transport and housing infrastructure required to cope with increased net migration. Given the terrible state of NHS waiting lists and the fact that there has been no meaningful increase in home building since 1980s these factors would represent a real constraint. The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) views the economic impact of net migration as positive based on some simplifying assumptions about employment rate, benefits eligibility and consumption patterns, although they also acknowledge the pressure on public services.
For better or for worse, electorates regularly express concern about net migration levels. Immigration is now considered around the third most important issue for voters behind the catch-all “economy” category, followed by the NHS. Despite this voter concern, consecutive governments have been unwilling, or unable, to reduce migration since it took off around 1997 under Tony Blair.
Large scale migration forms part of Agenda 2030, which states “we will cooperate internationally to ensure safe, orderly and regular migration”. Large scale migration appears to be a policy which the “liberal elite” is committed to, with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown famously being caught on a hot mic dismissing a voter expressing concerns as a “bigoted woman”2.
Politicians don’t seem to display any real interest in the elephant in the room question as to why many Western countries are going into demographic self-destruct with deaths regularly exceeding births. Rather than looking at this question, the political establishment has introduced what the United Nations calls “replacement migration”3. This is a simple back-solve to work out how many immigrants are needed in order to maintain certain defined key population metrics, like the dependency ratio.
This kind of technocratic, or mathematical “solution” ignores the question of declining domestic populations, voter concerns and a country’s capacity to culturally absorb immigrants.
Conclusion
The “Conservatives” have dropped the ball on several fronts, like most politicians they will try and present any pull back from a bad situation as a relative improvement, but this spin is unlikely to work in the case of net migration levels which are now receiving a lot of attention. These figures represent a gift horse for Reform UK, which has built up a 12% share of the vote in various polls, largely thanks to its stated policy of reducing immigration. The “Conservative” government’s willingness to let legal net migration exceed three quarters of a million in 2022 looks like an act of electoral hara-kiri, as well as a betrayal of those voters who expected to see net migration fall post Brexit.
Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial COVID model4, he is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach (www.thinkingcoalition.com)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/11/david-cameron-limit-immigration
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/apr/28/gordon-brown-bigoted-woman
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Line/826