“There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance”. In such a spirit should we greet the news that Fraser Nelson has been recruited to the immigration restrictionism.
As Editor of The Spectator, Nelson pursued a consistently liberal line on both legal and illegal migration. At one time or another he advocated for the removal of a cap on student numbers, an amnesty for all illegal immigrants currently in the UK, and an unqualified right to remain for all EU nationals. In the Boriswave blame-pinning, he can be considered one of the Guilty Men.
But in his latest Telegraph column, Nelson displayed something of a changed mind. “I’ve long been a supporter of mass immigration,” he confesses, “thinking every economy needs to be open to the world and its talents”. Since “immigrants flatter most social metrics and now make up one in five workers” – without the “xenophobic backlash…seen on the Continent” – unprecedented levels of migration in the last three decades can be considered “a net benefit”.
But cheer-leading for border liberality requires being “honest about what we mean”. Those who can “list the advantages” must also “admit to the drawbacks – and who suffers them”. Immigration covers up social dysfunction. It has “solved too many problems”, allowing ministers to cover up skill shortages and surging numbers of benefit claims – currently sitting at a “scandalous 3.2 million”.
Rather than treat Brexit as a springboard to a new economic settlement, successive Conservative governments doubled down. Pledges of getting numbers down to the tens of thousands – or at least controlling and reducing, as per the 2019 manifesto – where sacrificed to enable Boris Johnson to be able to look his brother in the eye, and be invited back to Financial Times lunches.
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. Our failure to control immigration – both legal and illegal – was the overwhelming reason why 42 per cent of Brexiteer voters who backed us in 2019 departed in July. Reform UK gained almost a quarter of our support. As Gavin Rice has detailed, immigration being too high was the number one reason why voters switched. Even a majority of those who went to the Lib Dems thought it should fall “a lot”.
Take a look at the 148 council by-elections since the general election, meticulously chronicled for us each week by Harry Phibbs. Conservatives have undoubtedly done well: up 21 seats, with Labour down 22. As predicted, the disillusionment of unenthusiastic electorate with this abysmal and moribund government has been swift. No wonder our readers are so optimistic for 2029.
But where exactly have these gains been made – and against whom? In the last month, in areas as diverse as Stockport, Somerset, Aberdeenshire, Derbyshire, and Monmouthshire, the Conservatives have made steady progress against the parties of the left – Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens – as fickle voters experience a little buyers’ remorse.
But Tory successes have come alongside Reform advances. In November they have taken seats from Labour in Wolverhampton, a Kent residents group, and us in Wyre. The situation over at the New Model People’s Army looks a little confused. Between disgraceful revelations about one of their MPs, Nigel Farage’s obvious boredom this side of the Atlantic, and endless hirings and firings, it is difficult to keep up with who is up, down, and unemployed.
Nonetheless, their steady march at a local level should set alarm bells ringing for Kemi Badenoch. As Sebastian Payne has highlighted, even if she can carve out a steady lead in the opinion polls, even a good result at this year’s local elections will likely see the Tories fall back. 19 out of 21 county councils up for election are Tory-held. As are seven of the nine unitary authorities. Previously contested at the height of Johnson’s vaccine bounce, the only way is down.
Through the personnel pantomime, Reform have made clear May’s elections are in their sights. Their previous underperformance at a local level should be compared with the simple message that Payne suggests that they will have: “councils are broke, council tax is too high, and local services are struggling”. Even if Tory losses are kept to a minimum, Reform will advance at our expense.
All of this is a roundabout way of suggesting that Badenoch needs an answer to the Reform challenge sooner rather than later. A difficult set of local elections next year will set alarm bells ringing at only six months into her leadership. Bruised egos and bad results are not a good combination.
Even if progress against Labour is made, with Reform’s ratings continuing to tick up, the German outcome of Badenoch’s leadership looks more likely. Mirroring the CDU’s revival since 2021, sounder rhetoric under a new leader coupled with a talentless left-wing government makes a centre-right revival suprisingly quick, with the prospect of a return to office within a single term high.
But the opinion poll support of our German counterparts rests at only 30-33 per cent. A party of the hard or populist right flourishes at the expense of a social democratic government in areas it would have considered its heartlands: the AFD in East Germany, and, in our case, Reform across the North and Midlands. Badenoch can win back swing voters who went to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. But the Red Wall is a much more difficult prospect, and Farage is a far more likely beneficiary.
If Badenoch is happy with a hung parliament being the best-case Tory scenario for 2029, so be it. Perhaps she is happy with having Farage as her Deputy Prime Minister, or believes a 2015-style campaign can win enough seats from the SNP and Liberal Democrats by spooking unionists and the southern middle-classes that “voting Swinney or Davey gets Starmer” to eke her a slim majority. Or maybe she isn’t looking that far ahead. Her big think has a few years left to run.
But if she wants a substantial Conservative majority, she will have to reunite the Vote Leave coalition. That will require seeing off Reform, and that will require regaining credibility on immigration. Robert Jenrick argued that required a clear pledge to leave the ECHR and radically reduce numbers. Badenoch demured on both fronts, primarily viewing immigration through the lens of culture. An explicit pledge on numbers is not her style.
Having been close to Nelson since her brief time at The Spectator, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that our new leader approaches the migration question in a similar way. Which is why we shall return to the piece with which I opened, and Nelson’s recent conversion.
Being a longstanding fan of the glorious nation of Sweden, Nelson points out how the country was recently “in crisis after taking far more refugees than it was able to handle”. But there has been a miracle on the Klarälven. Sweden has now not only cut net migration, but reversed it.
Minimum salary requirements doubled. Deportations ramped up. The number of refugees accepted cut by 80 per cent. And as much as £25, 000 offered for migrants to “remigrate”. This is all whilst remaining a member of the European Union, making our performance since 2019 all the more pitiful.
Eschewing the great clunking fist of a Jenrick-esque cap on numbers, one hopes that policies such as these will feed into Badenoch’s policy review. Whilst they may require a little explaining to a bruised electorate, they would constitute a serious enough prospectus to indicate we have finally learnt from a decade and a half of empty promises.
When we where last in Opposition, learn from the public policy successes of our centre-right contemporaries was very much in vogue – an approach Nelson has always championed, and one that we hope he will continue to do so now he has moved on from Old Queen Street. Badenoch should follow in the footsteps of her former boss, and take a long, hard look at Sweden.