The immigration debate in Britain has been disfigured by a combination of wilful evasion on the left and bad faith on the right for so long that it is now genuinely difficult to have a rational conversation about what is simultaneously a pressing public policy question and one of the most politically toxic subjects in British life.
Let me try.
The Scale
Net migration to the United Kingdom in the most recent year for which complete data is available was 685,000. This is a large number. It is larger than most people, regardless of political affiliation, expected or probably wanted.
It is significantly above the level that public services — housing, healthcare, schools — were planned around. It is above the level that the receiving communities in some areas can absorb without genuine disruption.
What Honest People Acknowledge on the Left
Britain's migration levels are politically unsustainable. Polling consistently shows that public concern about migration is widespread, cuts across demographic lines, and is not primarily driven by racism. Dismissing it as such is both analytically wrong and politically counterproductive.
The argument that "we need migrants for the NHS" is simultaneously true and a deflection. It is true that the NHS depends on migrant workers. The honest response to that fact is that we have failed to train enough domestic workers — a failure that preceded and will outlast any particular migration level.
What Honest People Acknowledge on the Right
The hostile environment, small boats enforcement operations, and rhetoric about reducing net migration have not reduced net migration. They have failed on their own terms.
