𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The fall in net migration trumpeted by the government over recent days is not as worthy of celebration as it might first seem. Figures hide a surge in Britons leaving our country. If migration is about attracting the best quality people to our nation, then clearly we are the losers. Many of those leaving the UK are young entrepreneurs who will benefit any country they go to whereas, in return, are under-skilled immigrants attracted by our generous benefits system who have been calculated to be a net drain on our economy.

The new figures show net migration had fallen to 171,000 in 2025, the lowest level since 2012. It’s way down on the 944,000 recorded in the year to 2023 – the notorious Boris-wave brought about by the then Tory Prime Minister panicking at the thought of the Covid pandemic leaving us without enough staff for public services. He flung open our borders to hundreds of thousands of non-EU immigrants.

This enormous influx destroyed the post-Brexit promise of “taking back control” of our borders and has wrecked the Conservative reputation for policing immigration. The irony is that it was then the Tory revision to work visas undertaken to cut down immigration during Rishi Sunak’s time in office in early 2024 that has led to the current dramatic fall in numbers. It has little to do with Labour and yet it is they who are claiming the glory. However, dig into the figures and they reveal the departure of 246,000 British and EU nationals has been rightly dubbed the “Starmer exodus.”

And it is Labour’s responsibility that emigration is up as more and more of our young people flee a country many feel no longer holds any hope for anyone wanting to improve their lives. With sky-high property prices and fewer jobs for young people, plus higher taxes and regulations stifling any entrepreneurship, get-up-and-go people are seeking more encouraging economies abroad. It has been matched by a similar draining of British wealth and investment to other countries.

One of our greatest entrepreneurs Sir Jim Ratcliffe has all but given up on Britain for expanding his company. “We are witnessing the extinction of one of our major industries as chemical manufacture has the life squeezed out of it,” Ratcliffe said recently, blaming Ed Miliband’s net zero madness, while pivoting his own investment to the USA and its pro-growth policies.

Labour too is still failing to get a grip on illegal migration across the Channel. Figures on small boat arrivals are up on the previous year and crucially there is a backlog in removing those denied asylum. Some 83,333 illegal migrants are awaiting the outcome of appeals in court – up by 91% on the previous year. Leaving the ECHR would allow a much speedier removal process but Labour are unwilling to make this decision, allowing vexatious human rights lawyers to hinder any rightful removals.

This would not be such an urgent issue if the quality of people coming in was high, with extra talents and skills we don’t have. But the fact is that most of these young men forcing their way on to small boats are not destined to be doctors and health care professionals, as many naive liberals would have us believe, but are from some of the poorest countries in the world, with different attitudes to law and order and are simply looking to make a quick buck at our expense.

The crime wave of high street shops dealing in drugs and illicit materials is largely down to foreign gangs with many of their foot-soldiers being illegal migrants who shouldn’t even be here. At its worst, it has meant a leap in assaults on young women with the most recent shocking incident being the Afghan child sex ring caught in Norfolk last week, all of them claiming to be “refugees”.

So despite overall migration figures being down, it is the long-lasting effects of legal and illegal migrants that is still bothering the voter. One fifth of our growing population has now been born abroad and is only adding to a sense of dislocation among working people.

Having spent their working lives paying taxes, they are angry seeing so much of our social benefits going to people who have only just arrived or forced their way into our country – and half of all new homes according to a report this week. It is this unfairness which is fuelling the move away from the old parties, who created this situation, to new parties offering a better way forward.