How do you solve a problem like the “Boriswave”? This conundrum is at the heart of the crisis facing the Conservative Party and Kemi Badenoch, 101 days into her leadership as of today.
As derogatory terms go, this one was unusually coined by people on the same side, within the Tory party. It refers to the sharp increase in migration to the UK after January 2021, when the post-Brexit visa rules implemented under Boris Johnson came into force. Johnson and his allies had for years promised a “points-based system” à la Australia, whereby visas to the UK were awarded based on requirements outlined in Whitehall, not on the nationality of the applicant. And a point-based system was what Britain got.
Unfortunately for those who had anticipated that the introduction of a such a system would bring down overall numbers, given Johnson had also promised to get net migration down, the opposite happened. A quick look at these graphs helpfully provided by the Office for National Statistics shows how dramatically immigration spiked after the new rules were introduced: inwards migration went from 737,000 people in year ending June 2021, to 1.1 million for year ending June 2022, 1.32 million for year ending June 2023. Net migration (these figures minus the number of people who emigrated from the UK for whatever reason) are: 254,000 (2021), 634,000 (2022), and 906,000 (2023).
One can argue, as Priti Patel tried to a few weeks ago, that this was all legal migration – the “brightest and best” coming to offer the UK their much-needed skills, to staff our hospitals and our care homes – and therefore not something anyone should get upset at the Conservatives about. The problem is that, while correct (at least in terms of the legal bit – arguments continue to rage about the skills part), that isn’t how voters see it. Polls show an increasing majority who think immigration is too high – 71 per cent according to YouGov’s latest figures.
The other problem is the rising concern that the “Boriswave migrants” come with a price tag. There are differing views on this from economists trying to make long-term predictions about whether the 1.3 million people who came to the UK in 2022-3 will end up contributing more to the state than they take out, but certain factors are raising alarm, especially on the right. One is the number of visas issued for dependents of those coming for work reasons – more dependents than workers, in some areas. Another is the fact that many of the jobs that recruited overseas workers are low-paid. The average salary of those filling health and social care jobs, for example, is £24,000. And that’s before one starts considering things like the “Deliveroo visa” – people coming here on student visas who then slip into the gig economy.
Current rules for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR – essentially permanent residency in the UK) require someone to live here for five years before beginning the process. The Tories are belatedly beginning to realise that the first of the Boriswave migrants will be able to apply from next year. The Centre for Policy Studies published a new report on Sunday which takes as a base case that 801,000 of these migrants will seek ILR, and models the projected net cost to the taxpayer at £234bn.
This estimate can be (indeed, is being) disputed. I’ll let economists argue it out. The point for the purposes of this column is the context it offers to the policy announced by the Tories last Thursday (somewhat surprisingly, given Badenoch suggested only a month ago that the party wouldn’t be setting out any big policies for two years). In a press release titled “Rebuilding trust”, Badenoch proposed increasing the time newcomers need to stay in the UK to be eligible for ILR from five years to ten years, increasing the time after that needed to apply for British citizenship from 12 months to five years, and denying ILR to anyone who had claimed benefits while here on a work visa.
I’ve written before about the divides in Tory party over something like this. Some are squeamish about changing the rules retrospectively, or reducing the integration incentive by pushing citizenship further other of reach. There are concerns about further alienating centrist voters who abandoned the party for the Liberal Democrats or Labour. It’s not hard to look at Badenoch’s proposals and come up with scenarios that make the Conservatives look needlessly cruel: a skilled overseas professional who comes over here, marries a Brit and has children, only for their spouse to develop a health condition that means the foreign-born partner has to quit their job and care for them, perhaps relying temporarily on benefits. Would they then be banned from ever being granted ILR and citizenship?
On the other side are Tories who worry that all this trumpeting about the potential cost of the Boriswave will just remind the public who was in charge of the rules that enabled numbers to get so out of control. They remember how Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats” became an albatross around the party’s neck, a handy shorthand to judge its failure.
So why did Badenoch announce this last week? The argument from those who back the policy is that, as one put it, “there is no Tory credibility on migration left to damage, this is now about building trust from the ground up”. They hope lobbying to change ILR rules will first demonstrate to voters that they recognise a mistake was made and are offering “atonement” for it, then cement that trust by showing they are attempting to mitigate the costs even in opposition.
If the Labour government decides to adopt some of changes (which you might think unlikely, but note how Keir Starmer has talked about the Tories’ “experiment in open borders”), the Conservatives will be able to argue that they got something done in opposition while Reform were too busy grandstanding and holding rallies to bother. If Starmer doesn’t, it still gives them ammunition to argue they’re as ambitious but more on top of the technical policy detail than Reform, while of course presenting an eye-catching dividing line with Labour.
It still comes with risks – it is pretty bold to argue that a policy area voters really care about disintegrated so radically on your watch that we need to overhaul the rules retrospectively to fix it. It also raises big questions about what Priti Patel is doing on the shadow frontbench if she screwed up so badly. And it’s a concrete admission – still contentious among some grassroots Tory factions – that Boris Johnson’s legacy is toxic.
Badenoch emphatically said she didn’t want to rush into announcing policies. The fact that she has changed her mind on this so soon suggests a degree of desperation, at least among those around her, and a recognition that this is an area of weakness that needs to be neutralised fast. The calculation for Badenoch’s Tories is it’s better to risk looking a bit desperate than to get swept away entirely by the Boriswave their party created.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Whose GDP is it anyway?]
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