It’s hard to quantify how many people have benefitted from the UK’s policy of an indefinite right to remain (ILR). We know how many people have applied. We don’t know how many people have stayed.
To say scrapping it wouldn’t have an impact on millions of residents, however, is nonsense. Ending the policy is a big bet by Reform and Nigel Farage. It’s new fodder for the immigration debate, and it has already generated a great deal of headlines and noise. But it won’t win votes.
As long as modern polling has existed, the public has never favoured relaxing our immigration rules. About five years ago, public antipathy towards immigration started to soften, but recently, with more coverage of boats and borders, it has increased. Over the past few decades, the vast majority of Britons – rich and poor, white and non-white – have favoured tougher migration rule.. This shouldn’t be news to readers of the New Statesman. “Mass uncontrolled immigration”, as Farage would put it, is something the median Briton has not been comfortable with for as long as I have been alive. As early as 2014, Farage polled as the most trusted politician to deal with our borders.
On the granularities of the argument – enriching or draining, integrating or segregating – most (albeit only a plurality) say that immigration has benefitted Britain more than it has damaged it. That does not, though, erase a persistent view that immigration has had numerous drawbacks. Currently, 45 per cent support the idea of admitting no more migrants, and even deporting those who have arrived recently.
This is pretty significant. “Send them back” is the sort of quip that would be scandalous ten years ago. It could have ended the mainstream political career of a parliamentary candidate. It’s now the policy preference of almost half the country.
But so far, the immigration debate has broadly been a debate about numbers – and about certain types of numbers. Hundreds of thousands of people is too many to comprehend. Around 900,000 net each year is obscene. When David Cameron pledged to bring net migration down to “tens of thousands”, that was conceivable to voters, though not quite as conceivable to the experts.
Now Farage has moved the debate from numbers to people. Indefinite leave to remain is no longer indefinite if Reform win the next election. It is to be reviewed, with stricter criteria and higher salary mandates. But it’s unclear what the criteria will be. The announcement bears remarkable similarity to the Labour government’s own comms strategy in dealing with Pip claimants: announce that claimants are to face new eligibility criteria and hoops to jump through. Refuse to elaborate. Lose seats.
It is a strategic misfire to warn of upheaval without going to pains to clarify who, specifically, will experience that upheaval.
Farage has advanced the debate from boats and borders. This proposed policy has painted a target on the backs of EU residents and anyone who has yet to apply for British citizenship but may still be settled and contributing to the British economy. It creates uncertainty – exactly what our economy does not need.
Making the debate all about illegal immigration, as Farage has previously done, is a sound strategy. Voters see illegal immigrants as the primary problem and inflow right now. They also significantly overstate their prevalence. Many who advocate more reactionary measures (like deporting recent arrivals) operate under the false pretence that the vast majority of migrants coming to Britain today are illegal.
In recasting the debate from numbers to people, however, Farage has made an error. Widening the immigration debate to all immigrants, no matter when they moved here, will make it a lot harder for Reform to win.
Most voters will know people affected by the scrapping of ILR. This ought to come across as a bridge too far to the median Briton.
The policy would be good for a protest party to make some noise. But not for a prospective party of government. And it may in the long run put a ceiling on Reform’s appeal. Drunk on success, Reform may have made its first big misstep.
[Further reading: Farage now tied with Starmer as “best prime minister”]
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