This week looks to be a significant one for polling in British politics. For the first time, every poll released across seven pollsters has had the Reform ahead of the Conservatives. So it is regrettable for Tory chances then, that an interview by Priti Patel has reignited debate around her party’s failure on mass migration. This failure is cited as the single biggest reason why 2019 Tory voters abandoned the Conservatives last year, according to the most comprehensive study to date.
Speaking to Harry Cole on TalkTV, the Shadow Foreign Secretary was asked about the explosion of arrivals on her watch. As Home Secretary under Boris Johnson, net migration figures rose from 271,000 in 2019 to 872,000 in 2022 when she left office. Asked to justify this, Patel sought to defend her record. She argued that the UK had ended free movement by leaving the European Union. Cole retorted that this was to then simply ‘throw open the borders’ to the rest of the world.
Patel insisted that this was ‘legal migration’, amounting to ‘the brightest and the best coming here.’ She did concede that ‘the government should have done more absolutely on skills and training Brits’ but she refused to apologise – instead suggesting that an apology might instead be owed to those who came here on health and social care visas in the pandemic. It was a jarring contrast with Kemi Badenoch’s first speech as leader when she admitted mistakes had been made.
The Tory leader’s team clearly thought Patel’s interview to be a misstep. Shortly after the clip began to get traction online, Badenoch’s office issued a statement: ‘while the last Conservative government may have tried to control numbers, we did not deliver.’ Shortly thereafter, the Shadow Foreign Secretary posted a statement admitting that ‘The immigration system in our country is not fit for purpose.’ That system, of course, was the one she herself helped design.
Confronting the party’s record in office is an unavoidable challenge for Tories. What makes Patel’s interview frustrating is that the line of questioning was entirely foreseeable: GB News pursued a similar line of inquiry back in August. Patel’s record at the Home Office was a major factor in why she finished last in the summer leadership race. While many on the right have personal affection for her, they thought she was simply not credible on the number one issue to win back defectors.
Patel’s apparent lack of repentance poses a challenge to Kemi Badenoch. At least one Shadow Cabinet member privately believes she ought to be sacked. For now, Badenoch has resisted the chance to do so. But to regain credibility on migration, some kind of gesture will have to be made. Some of Badenoch’s predecessors as Leader of the Opposition made a virtue of sacrificial lambs: witness Keir Starmer’s sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey over antisemitism claims back in 2020. But Badenoch clearly sees virtue in stability, having suggested there will be no reshuffle before 2029.
Personnel is one obvious way of demonstrating change; policy is the other. David Cameron, another successful Leader of the Opposition, made a great virtue of slaying Tory shibboleths to show that the party had changed. One way of doing this on migration might be for Badenoch to urge Starmer to deny indefinite leave to remain status to migrants who arrived here in the so-called ‘Boriswave.’
As a piece of policy-making it is shameless. But frankly, shamelessness, might be what the Tory party needs. Within eight weeks of the general election, Nigel Farage was able to ditch, consequence-free, the entire manifesto on which he campaigned. Doling out thousands of visas, only to then suggest those eligible should not be allowed to stay, is a breathtakingly cynical move. But it is the kind of move that some Tories believe is necessary to revitalise the party’s polling.
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