The sheer scale of the Boriswave was so large that today one in every thirty people in Britain* arrived between the years 2021 and 2025. Most came from radically different cultures outside Europe with no thought to social cohesion.
Not even one in five of the migrants who the Tories imported into Britain came on skilled worker visas.
The eventual cost of the Boriswave, which the Tories did under the radar at the time, could be hundreds of billions of pounds. Some estimates are higher than £600 billion.
Of the more than 760,000 people who came into Britain on the Health and Care visa route between 2022 and 2026, more than 470,000 of them were relatives.
Under labour's latest proposals for indefinite leave to remain they will now all be allowed to stay in Britain. Forever. While claiming welfare benefits, council housing, student loans, and more.
When you add in refugees coming via safe and legal routes (including from Afghanistan and Gaza) and illegals who have been here for more than 20 years (all of whom will be allowed to stay forever) the government expects that around 1.9 million people will settle in the country permanently.
Labour politicians have been defending Mahmood's climbdown (well, they forced it on her) saying things like “this is about fairness - what’s fair about asking people to come to Britain and then asking them to leave when their visas expire?”. Except that's how immigration systems work in the rest of the world, where people leave when their visas expire.
Much of this material is drawn from Matt Goodwin's Substack post of 4 November. Now I'm not that fond of Goodwin or the Reform party he supports. Indeed, I think they are dangerous and a Reform government would be pastiche Trump. But it doesn't make any of the above numbers or arguments wrong.
It's also an odd type of "fairness" which always gives priority to people who haven't contributed to our country or society over those who have. We should of course take a reasonable share of those seeking asylum, though in our troubled world the practicality of that is getting stretched. And just watch out - were we to rejoin the EU or even adopt free movement I expect the EU will be expecting us to take more not fewer asylum seekers. The EU has already stated that it will insist we scale back plans the government has to deport certain categories of criminals back to Europe as a price for a closer relationship.
Reform were beginning to look a busted flush. But Labour's reversion to type on the immigration issue and also the foolish re-opening of the Brexit debate (rather than simply continuing to progress the natural move towards closer relations with the EU) risks giving them a get out of jail card.
Nigel Farage has said that immigration and the EU were dead issues before Tony Blair embraced immediate free movement without restrictions (we were were one of only three EU countries to do so at the time). Labour are risking breathing new life into what was becoming a dead parrot.
* figures quoted by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and supported by the Centre for Policy Studies. 4.2 million people arrived in 2021-24 (net 2.6 to 2.9 million after departures) which produces the figure of 1 in 30 of the population.
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