SpecData

Another day, another poll. This time YouGov has found that almost six in ten Brits say that immigration is one of the most important issues facing the country – almost double those who rate health as their number one concern, and more than double those worried about crime. Crikey! Fears about immigration have climbed by four percentage points compared to a fortnight ago, to 56 per cent. Healthcare ranked almost equally with immigration in June last year, but since then border control has become more important to Brits. Meanwhile concern about crime has risen three points in the last few weeks – coinciding with Reform’s ‘Lawless Britain’ campaign that has

This week, we learned that three years ago a Ministry of Defence official accidentally released details of 18,714 Afghans who had applied for relocation to the UK. The Afghans, who had worked with British armed forces, feared retribution from the Taliban, so the Conservative government introduced a new scheme, alongside existing programmes, to resettle some of these people. The Spectator’s leading article this week argues that Britain had a moral responsibility to help them. But how many have arrived so far? And where are they living in Britain? As of May, 35,245 people had been relocated to the UK through the Afghan resettlement programme made up of several schemes such as the Afghan Relocations and

Another day, another bad poll for Sir Keir Starmer’s party. Now YouGov has revealed that Labour has recorded its lowest poll rating since before the 2019 general election, with just over a fifth of Brits saying they would vote for the reds tomorrow, while Nigel Farage’s Reform UK sees its largest lead to date on the party of government. How very interesting… The latest data from the polling giant, collected between 26-27 May, shows that a little under a third of British adults would back Farage’s crowd if there was a national poll tomorrow – a figure that remains consistent on the week before. Meanwhile Starmer’s army has dropped a

After ten months in office, Keir Starmer has promised to ‘finally take back control’ of migration – but what’s his record so far? We don’t yet have the key figure for net migration (that’s due in ten days’ time), but other more timely data shows that the Prime Minister is failing to live up to promises he made before the election. This failure is most obvious on small boats. Starmer said he would ‘smash the gangs’ to stop small boat crossings. It hasn’t worked: record numbers are crossing the Channel. Some 11,574 people have made the journey so far this year, 25 per cent more than in the same period

There’s been a teal tsunami. Of the 23 councils up for election, Reform took 10 while the Tories lost 15. Reform also gained an MP in Runcorn and two mayoralties, in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire. Reform won the Runcorn by-election by just six votes after a recount requested by Labour. It’s the first by-election of this parliament and came about after Mike Amesbury received a suspended prison sentence for punching a man outside a pub. Reform’s candidate, Sarah Pochin, is the new MP – she won 12,645 votes compared with Labour’s 12,639. Here’s the national picture for councils: One Labour campaigner says what she heard on the doorstep

Tick tock. There are less than 48 hours to go until Rachel Reeves’s big Spring Statement on Wednesday and as the Treasury finalises its preparations for the big reveal, YouGov has been running some tax-related tests of its own. In a blow for the reds, the polling company has found that it is becoming more difficult for the Labour lot to blame the Tories for its tax and spend decisions – with an increasing number of people seeing Sir Keir Starmer’s government as responsible for tough tax calls. In a survey conducted between the 18-19 March, YouGov found that 80 per cent of Brits say UK finances are in a

Boris Johnson is trying to wash his hands of the unprecedented wave of migration that has seen more than one million people move to the UK in each of the last three years. He was confronted about this ‘Boriswave’ on the Triggernometry podcast yesterday and told the hosts that rather than being the result of his decisions, Covid and the Migration Advisory Committee were to blame. Are his explanations convincing? First, he said the bounce was due to people leaving the country in the pandemic and returning afterwards: ‘If you look at what actually happened, the numbers go down, we had a huge number of people leave the country because of Covid…

Is Nigel Farage’s position under threat? Most inside Reform don’t seem to think so – but a new poll offers a warning shot to the Clacton MP. It transpires that a third of the party’s voters think Reform would be performing better if he stepped down and allowed another to take his place. Who might they have in mind? With the explosive events of the weekend threatening to derail the party, the YouGov survey could hardly land at a worse time… The civil war that has engulfed the right-wing party over the last week appears to have left its supporters feeling split too. The fallout between Farage and Rupert Lowe

Small boat crossings since the start of the year are at a record level. Yesterday 326 migrants arrived, bringing this year’s total to 3,224. Last year 2,983 migrants crossed the Channel over the same period. The number who have made the journey since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, having promised to ‘stop the small boat crossings’, is 24,666. The figures are in stark contrast to the US, where Donald Trump recently announced that ‘the invasion of our country is over’ with attempts to illegally cross the US-Mexico border at a record low. Border agents had 8,326 encounters with migrants in February, Trump said; there were 190,000 in the same month last year.  One of