Yesterday’s release of immigration figures by the ONS didn’t make for particularly pleasant reading. While net migration had fallen to around 200,000 in the 12 months to June, much of this was down to an unusually high exodus of people, with 693,000 leaving the country over the same period. Many of those leaving were under the age of 30.
That news, however, seemed to prompt something approaching gloating over at the New York Times, which published a piece yesterday headlined: ‘The British Public Thinks Immigration Is Up. It’s Actually Down, Sharply.’ To labour the point, the piece was accompanied by a picture of anti-migration protestors in Scotland. The not-so-subtle subtext being: what a bunch of gammon thickos the anti-migration lot are in the UK.
The piece went on to chastise Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, saying her ‘fiery rhetoric does not entirely match the reality’ of migration, as well as Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and the British public at large:
‘Britain’s political elites are focusing the public’s attention on migration in ways that are not always accurate, especially when it comes to describing the scale of the flow of people into the country, experts say. That is helping to create a gap between how people perceive immigration in Britain and the facts.’
Hmmm, what are the facts though? And do they actually match the NYT’s version of reality?
When you strip away the net migration figures – which are influenced by people leaving the country – and look at immigration alone, you perhaps get a clearer picture of the situation.
The NYT rightfully mention that immigration was down last year from 1.3 million to around 898,000. But it rather neglects to mention the fact that this is still stupendously high in the history of the British isles. It only looks like a sharp fall if you compare it to the peaks of 1.4 million in 2023.
In fact, if don’t count the Boriswave surge in immigration post-2020, last year would have been the highest recorded immigration since records began:
In other words, it looks like the British public are far more in tune with the realities of immigration than the so-called experts advising the US paper of record.
It looks like it’s gammons 1 – NYT 0.
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