British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stood in front of his official residence at 10 Downing Street last week to savage the immigration policies of his predecessors (and current opposition) in the Conservative Party, claiming that the former government used Brexit “to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders”. Although the subject was UK policies, Starmer’s complaints resonate on this side of the Atlantic, as well — and that’s likely not a coincidence.
“14 Years of Conservative Government”. Starmer took over as prime minister in July after his Labour Party won 411 seats in that month’s parliamentary elections. Given that there are only 650 seats in the House of Commons, and that up until the election Labour only held 209 of them, one can safely term Labour’s victory both a “landslide” and a “sea change”.
The election ended 14 years that the Conservatives (also known as the “Tories”) held power in parliament, and the prime minister’s portfolio with it.
Let’s just say that it was a momentous if not entirely successful run for the center-right party, seeing the country from the end of the “Great Recession”, though Brexit and pandemic shutdowns, and into the sort of scandal and malaise common to parties that have overstayed their welcomes.
“Brexit” and Immigration. There were technically five Tory prime ministers during that 14-year period, the longest-serving of whom was the first, David Cameron (now “Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton”), who was in office from 2010 to 2016.
More specifically, he resigned as prime minister shortly after a majority of Britons voted in favor of leaving the European Union (EU) in a referendum held in late June 2016 that triggered what has come to be known as “Brexit” (“a portmanteau of the words ‘British’ and ‘exit’”). And therein hangs a tale.
The UK was always an interesting fit in the EU, joining the bloc in 1973 when it was the European Economic Community (EEC) and participating in its Single Market and Customs Union, but abstaining (along with Sweden and Denmark) from adopting the EU’s single currency, the euro.
Most critically, prior to Brexit, EU nationals did not need visas to move to Britain, and an influx of other Europeans into the country was a source of local tension. As the Migration Policy Institute explained in May 2016, prior to the vote:
The topic of migration has been central to the referendum debate. For an astonishing nine consecutive months, voters have identified immigration as among the most important issues facing Britain (based on Ipsos MORI polling). In April, 47 percent rated immigration as the most pressing concern; just half that number identified the economy as the most important issue. However, when asked specifically about their vote on Europe, respondents cite the economy as their primary consideration, with migration a close second.
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Public opinion on future migration flows and restrictions currently matter more to voters. The most passionate Leave supporters (representing around one-quarter of the UK public) are very strongly correlated with the most anti-immigrant UK voters. Voters strongly attached to an “English” (as opposed to a “British”) identity — a disproportionately Conservative-leaning group crucial to the outcome — favor leaving the European Union. Furthermore, anxieties over migration extend beyond this group, with two-thirds of the public favoring migration restrictions.
In the period from July 2014 to June 2015, there was a net migration of approximately 212,000 other EU nationals into Britain — 60 percent of whom (125,000) were from central and eastern Europe. That influx triggered strong complaints that those workers were taking British jobs.
Cameron opposed Brexit, and with a stiff upper lift resigned from office directly after the votes were cast, leaving it to his Conservative successors to work out the details of the divorce.
Sorting out the finer points of Brexit was about as complicated as you’d imagine, and it wasn’t until Boris Johnson succeeded Cameron’s immediate replacement (Theresa May) as prime minister that the UK officially left the EU on January 31, 2020, with other related issues rolling into May 2023.
Migration by EU citizens into the UK has plummeted since Brexit, with 51,000 more of them leaving than arriving in calendar year 2022 and EU-source immigration falling 70 percent from 2016 to 2023.
Non-EU Migration. Don’t get the idea, however, that total immigration into the UK has dropped since Brexit, however, because the opposite is true.
That’s because, as the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford has reported, there was an estimated net migration of 845,000 non-EU citizens into Britain in the year ending June 2024 (including a net of 417,000 non-EU citizens who came for work and their dependents), which was actually a decline in estimated net migration from the year ended December 2022 of 965,000 (including a net of 280,000 workers and dependents and 425,000 students).
Total estimated net migration to the UK hit a high of 906,000 in the year ended June 2023, up from 321,000 in the year ended June 2016. Things have slacked off a bit since, but still total estimated net migration into the UK was 728,000 in the year ended June 2024.
Most Important Issues Facing the UK. Not surprisingly, immigration was a major factor in the run-up to the July parliamentary elections that brought Starmer and Labour to power. According to YouGov UK, 41 percent of British adults surveyed in late June identified immigration as one of the “most important issues” facing the country, trailing only “the economy” (51 percent) on the list of their concerns.
Anxiety over immigration has only increased since, with between 42 percent and 44 percent of British adults naming it one of the UK’s most important issues (it hit 48 percent in August).
Back to Starmer. Which brings me to Starmer’s November 28 speech at 10 Downing Street, in which he castigated policies the Tories had implemented that triggered that post-Brexit immigration spike.
There are a lot of ellipses in the PM’s speech (and if you’ve ever heard a British politician speak, you understand why), but here are the key excerpts, cleaned up:
When we came into office – we immediately conducted an audit of public finances. And we found a £22 billion black hole.
Now – the independent Office of National Statistics [ONS] has conducted vital work on the state of immigration. As the ONS sets out, nearly one million people came to Britain in the year ending June 2023. That is four times the migration levels compared with 2019.
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But what we didn’t hear, what the British people are owed, is an explanation. Because a failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck. It isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball. No – this a different order of failure. This happened by design, not accident. Policies were reformed, deliberately to liberalise immigration.
Brexit was used for that purpose, to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders. Global Britain – remember that slogan, that is what they meant. A policy with no support.
Well that’s unforgivable. And mark my words – this government will turn the page.
That begins in the economy. Because you cannot separate this failure from their refusal to do the hard yards on skills, on welfare reform, on giving our young people opportunities, rather than the easy answers of looking overseas.
Because clearly – the vast majority of people who entered this country did so to plug gaps in our workforce, skills shortages across the country, which have left our economy hopelessly reliant on immigration. 2.8 million people out of work on long-term sickness – a problem ignored, left to fester. One in 8 young people not in employment or education or training. Sectors of our economy, like engineering, where apprenticeships have almost halved in the last decade, while visas have doubled.
The “Global Britain” Starmer referenced was a plan announced by then-PM Theresa May to expand UK trade globally in the wake of Brexit, but it has never panned out.
Echoes Across the Atlantic. Excise that Britain-specific reference, however, and you hear a lot of themes that have been repeated by open-immigration skeptics here: “cheap labor” inflicts a high cost on taxpayers; open borders aren’t a boon to the economy; and there are no jobs that Americans won’t or can’t do, provided they have the tools and receive a decent wage.
Interestingly, Starmer focuses on the UK-version of a crucial point my colleague Steven Camarota often makes, to wit, that there is a large and growing population of working-age Americans (and “prime-age” men aged 25 to 54 in particular) who are out of the labor force altogether.
This, as Camarota has explained, “contributes to serious social problems, including suicide, crime, drug overdoses, and welfare dependency”.
Those are difficult issues for our country to tackle, but it is much better for our government to address them head-on than to simply give those workers hand-outs and “plug gaps in our workforce” with imported labor.
The timing of Starmer’s speech itself is unusual, and although he ties it to the release of the ONS data, it’s difficult not to conclude that it is in some way tied to electoral results in this country.
American voters were offered two different immigration visions on November 5, one a continued reliance on large-scale immigration and the other increased enforcement and a return to an orderly and limited immigration system, and they chose the latter.
In many ways, U.S. policies drive similar policies abroad, particularly among our closest allies, so don’t be surprised to see other leaders promising immigration crackdowns — because that was plainly what British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was pitching his constituents last week.