Asylum seekers / immigration

Well it is, because the Govt is obsessed with all immigration - and specifically net migration (the amount the total population increases)

After the 2010 election, the government’s stated goal was to reduce net migration to under 100,000 a year & the manifesto contained a promise to get net migration down to the "tens of thousands a year". The government introduced several policies to restrict migration. These included restrictions on skilled workers, whose numbers were capped and who faced increased skill and salary requirements

The promise of net migration in the tens of thousands appeared again in the Conservative Party's 2015 manifesto.

The promise remained unkept under former prime minister Theresa May, who held the line of "net migration down to the tens of thousands" in the Conservative Party's 2017 manifesto.

Only in its 2019 manifesto, when Boris Johnson succeeded her as Tory leader, did the party ditch the under-100,000 pledge.

On 1 January 2021, the UK implemented a new immigration system: the “Points-Based Immigration System”. This followed the end of the UK’s participation in EU freedom of movement on 31 December 2020 - surely ths would do the trick?

So the latest news that net migration into UK in 2022 was revised up to the record-breaking figure of 745,000 is, according to their own parameters, a total disaster

Predictable wailing from Tory press...

I'd agree but it also starkly demonstrates how spectacularly the Tories have failed at the one thing they have consistently made such a song and dance about

I really wish Labour would make the argument in favour of immigration along the lines I outlined above...

100% Doug

And that all comes back to a grown up debate about tax

It's all well and good taxing income but it's wealth that really needs to be taxed

The disaprity between the richest and the rest is massive and getting bigger

There's plenty of money to go round but no politician wants to go there at the moment

Take land for example, most of the England is still owned by the same families that took control after the Norman Conquest..

www.countryfile.com/news/who-owns-england-history-of-englands-landownership-and-how-much-is-privately-owned-today

Landowners are more likely to get grants than pax tax on their collosal land wealth

Freddie Hayward (New Statesman daily email)....

The argument that Nigel Farage is a political dud because he has lost seven parliamentary contests is wrong. He is the most consummate politician since Tony Blair. He commands politics. He taps into what a significant minority of voters think. He predicts, and then moulds, the debate. He was the first to raise the migrant crossings in the Channel. He anticipated the West’s move against China. He campaigned for Brexit for two decades before it happened.

Much of this was possible because he is also the love child of the parliamentary press. The media adores him because he charismatically dismantles the dreary received wisdom of the political establishment. He makes good TV and copy. Conflict is news in a way consensus is not. In a campaign such as this, he will travel.

And yet, he is the media’s puppeteer. He speaks a language that people understand. His pint-wielding repartee cuts through. And people hate him, for sure. His toxicity places a hard ceiling on his support. Fifty-four per cent don’t like him. But 30 per cent do, and that’s enough to cause serious problems for Rishi Sunak. Farage can harvest a loyal crop of voters who support him because he channels a resentment towards the status quo that others struggle to articulate. His rant yesterday that kids today can’t date D-Day was effective, not because people care about D-Day, but because they think the establishment has forgotten something they thought was important. His failed quests to become an MP should not distract from Brexit, nor that Ukip received 3.9 million votes in 2015. His influence, so far, has been extra-parliamentary.

At the press conference yesterday, in which he usurped Richard Tice as leader of Reform with the effortless cruelty of the free market for which his party should be better known, he put immigration at the centre of the election. He said the political class had failed. And he’s right: for 14 years voters have put those who promised lower immigration in power only for it to reach record levels.

As for Labour, those I’ve spoken to welcome his return. He will, the thinking goes, split the Tory vote. But they shouldn’t be so hasty. Farage’s comeback should make them nervous. He could challenge their embrace of the economic consensus. He is the most articulate version of the right-wing critique Keir Starmer will inevitably encounter.

Farage has been clear his return is not about this election, but the next one. With the Greens stirring on the left, and Reform gathering on the right, a future Labour government faces a mounting, if still relatively small, anti-establishment force. And that’s before we consider whether Farage manages to take over the Conservative Party – and all the resources that would mean.

Farage’s politics are increasingly international. He thrives on the European and American stages. In April, as the Belgian police tried to shut down the National Conservative conference in Brussels, he looked gleeful. In the US, he has become “Brexit man” and Trump’s support act. That conspiracy-laden, anti-system, culturally anxious politics is the direction he wants to take the UK. Even if voters aren’t there yet – the NHS polls higher than gun rights – that does not mean they won’t be eventually.

However long you think the UK can resist America’s polarised politics, this should be a warning to Labour. The party’s downfall could come from Farage’s rise. With a deracinated Conservative Party, Labour could find that Farage, or at least the politics he represents, becomes its true opposition. And, potentially, its successor.