“Control”. It’s the word of the moment — a touchstone for almost every political debate in Britain today. We often hear about how we’ve “lost control” of cities like London, how control has shifted to lefty lawyers and shady bureaucrats, or how we’ve ceded control to international courts and NGOs. 

This is why the Brexit campaign’s slogan, “Take back control,” hit home so hard. It wasn’t just catchy — it was cathartic. It appealed directly to people who felt disempowered, out of the loop, and ignored by those in charge. As Paul Goldsmith noted in How to Lose a Referendum, Vote Leave’s slogans weren’t conjured by spin doctors — they echoed what people themselves were saying.

And it worked. Boris Johnson declared, “[the] only way to take back control of immigration is to Vote Leave”, while Priti Patel vowed to end the “chaos” with a slick new system that would slash numbers and cherry-pick only “the best and the brightest”. It was a bold pitch — simple, direct, and perfectly tailored to sell the dream of a Britain back in control of its destiny. 

… to call these figures “shocking” doesn’t do them justice

Fast forward to today, and those promises feel like ancient history. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show net migration hitting 728,000 for 2024 — more than triple what it was pre-Brexit. And if that’s not bad enough, 2023’s intake soared to a record-breaking 906,000. The immigration crisis is deeper, more entrenched, and more damaging than anyone anticipated. 

This isn’t just a logistical headache for policymakers scrambling to build housing or keep public services afloat. It goes far beyond that. The stakes are existential. At its core, this crisis threatens the very fabric of Britain as a cohesive, prosperous, high-trust society. That’s what’s on the line here — and it’s hard to overstate just how high the stakes are.

Indeed, to call these figures “shocking” doesn’t do them justice. When the numbers landed recently, I found myself, for once, utterly speechless. But the truth is, anger wasn’t my first reaction. What I felt, instead, was resignation. It’s not just that these numbers are terrible — it’s that they signal something far worse: damage that’s near impossible to reverse. 

The most we can hope for now is to stop making things worse. Damage limitation is the name of the game. As the old saying goes: when you’re in a hole, stop digging.

The chorus and Cassandra

Unfortunately, our political leaders haven’t grasped this. In fact, they seem to live by the opposite principle: when in a hole, keep digging. 

Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called the Tories an “open borders” party and accused them of conducting an “experiment” like a mad scientist in an anarchist’s laboratory. He then went further, claiming this wasn’t an “accident” but a deliberate strategy born of political calculation.

For many, Starmer’s critique felt like a watershed moment. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch tried to move the goalposts by admitting her party had failed to “deliver,” but this only told half the story. Deliver, they did — but what they delivered was mass immigration, precisely as planned. Badenoch herself championed an uncapped immigration policy and openly worked alongside powerful lobbying groups, something she even boasted about in Parliament. Yet, this rather inconvenient fact has been swept under the rug. As I explained to Lee Hall of British Thought Leaders back in July:

Politicians haven’t lost control of immigration; politicians have surrendered control of immigration to various interest groups. And, of course, politicians have issued visas for humanitarian and foreign policy reasons. Now, these are intentional, deliberate choices.

On this, Starmer and I agree. But while he’s nailed the diagnosis, his cure is all wrong. Labour’s refusal to cap visas, dismissing them as “arbitrary,” misses the point. Caps aren’t about mathematical perfection – they’re about drawing a line in the sand — about saying, “this far and no further”. They act as a safeguard against the endless pressure from lobbyists and so-called “stakeholders” who promise a moon on a stick if only we keep the borders wide open. 

Even worse, Starmer is making the system even leakier. He’s bringing illegal immigrants into the asylum process, fast-tracking their claims without any plan for removals. Sure, Labour might boast about ramping up deportations to safe countries like Romania, Nigeria and Vietnam. But what about those from “unsafe” hotspots like Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, or Iraq? The law means they’ll stay — and they know it.

Starmer recently told the public that Britain’s political system isn’t just creaking; it’s rotten to the core and needs radical change. And he’s right about that. The trouble is, Starmer isn’t the revolutionary he pretends to be. He is the establishment in a new costume.

The paradox of immigration

So how did we get here? As Dan Hodges of the Mail on Sunday aptly put it on X: “I genuinely don’t understand – given the salience of immigration – how the last Government let net migration spiral to one million. What were the Tories thinking? It was political suicide.”

Hodges has hit the nail on the head. This isn’t just a policy failure — it’s a betrayal of trust and a colossal act of political self-sabotage. MPs love to talk tough on immigration, setting bold targets and making grand promises. But once in office, they backslide, dither, and cave to pressure. Instead of firewalling the system, they’ve made it weaker, more chaotic, and less accountable.

The truth is, Tory ministers weren’t passive bystanders in this immigration disaster. They actively made choices that tore down safeguards and opened the floodgates even wider. These weren’t accidents — they were deliberate decisions.

Here’s what the Tories did:

1. Scrapped Theresa May’s cap on non-EU migrant workers, creating an uncapped system.
2. Opened up recruitment to lower skill levels (RQF levels 3-5).
3. Expanded recruitment to even lower levels (RQF levels 1-2).
4. Removed the resident labour market test, meaning jobs didn’t have to be advertised in the UK first.
5. Lowered the general salary threshold from £30,000 to £25,600.
6. Reintroduced the post-study work visa for international students, allowing them to stay in the UK for at least two years.
7. Issued humanitarian visas with no caps or sunset clauses.
8. Allowed dependents to join care workers and postgraduate students (until later reversed).
9. Failed to tighten up the family visa, despite knowing it was a key engine for low-skill chain migration from outside the EU.
10. Failed to abolish the Human Rights Act, fully aware it was blocking deportations of illegal immigrants and fuelling a backlog in the asylum system by allowing endless appeals.

So why did this happen? Why would ministers make decisions so clearly out of step with public opinion? After all, traditional democratic theory assumes that politicians are ruthless vote-seekers, laser-focused on what voters want. But immigration policy tells a different story.

The answer to this, which many political commentators won’t want to hear, is that while politicians do pay attention to polling, their decisions are often shaped by two other factors: ideology and incentives.

Take the post-2016 explosion in net migration. Two key factors are at play:

• Elite ideology: Many MPs have absorbed the worldview of London’s cultural and economic elite, embracing glossy concepts like “Global Britain” that conflict with the public’s more restrictionist stance. These MPs also cling to economically flawed ideas about labour markets and the supposed link between population growth and economic prosperity.
• Perverse incentives: Politicians focus on short-term media optics and building relationships with journalists, business leaders, and other “stakeholders” rather than fulfilling manifesto commitments. The result? Immigration becomes a sticking plaster, used to mask deeper systemic failures and appease interest groups, rather than a strategic tool to improve economic performance.

Manchester mayor Andy Burnham recently said that “the big lie of Brexit needs to be exposed” as it has “weakened” immigration control instead of strengthening it. But in reality, the issue isn’t Brexit itself; it’s the bad incentives and flawed thinking that dominate Westminster. This leads to what I call the paradox of immigration. Governments have the power to drastically cut migration — a move that could seriously boost their electoral chances — yet they still refuse to act. This paradox comes from the short-term, sometimes irrational nature of political decision-making, which doesn’t always line up with what we’d expect from a democracy.

Let’s take a closer look.

Ideology, part I: Global Britain

Humanitarianism

MPs are far more enthralled by foreign affairs than most voters — an interest rooted in class traditions and imperial nostalgia. Many former Cabinet members, from Boris Johnson to Rishi Sunak, are global nomads with lives far removed from the average Briton. For them, immigration policy isn’t just about managing domestic concerns — it’s about projecting soft power on the international stage.

Boris Johnson exemplifies this mindset. As Prime Minister, he championed the Global Britain vision, even endorsing an amnesty for illegal immigrants during his time as London mayor. His rhetoric about being a “one-man melting pot” revealed an identity politics-lite approach that resonated more with elite circles than with everyday voters.

This mindset translated into policies like humanitarian visas for Hong Kongers and Ukrainians. Now, don’t get me wrong — giving these visas was a compassionate move, and I’d bet good money that many of these migrants, especially the Hong Kongers, will prove to be standout contributors to Britain’s economy. But what’s striking is how slapdash and knee-jerk the whole process was. Notably, there were no caps or sunset clauses to manage these schemes responsibly. In their rush to appear compassionate, politicians ignored the real-world pressures these policies created, from rising rents to overcrowded schools. It’s particularly baffling that these visas were handed out without any simultaneous reform to the planning system. This screamed of politicians prioritising their own foreign policy glory – puffing up Britain’s image abroad, flexing our “soft power” muscles over the hard realities of managing immigration on the home front.

The Tories’ refusal to tackle the Human Rights Act (HRA) is another damning example of their globalist mindset at work. Since its introduction in 1998, the HRA embedded the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law, making deporting illegal immigrants, particularly those with families or from “unsafe” countries, nearly impossible. Rather than tackle these legal barriers head-on, successive Tory governments dithered. Under Johnson, they pushed the Rwanda plan without dismantling the HRA, knowing it would hit legal roadblocks. Predictably, the courts struck it down, leaving the problem unresolved. 

Under Sunak, the Tories attempted to sidestep the issue by negotiating a fresh treaty with Rwanda and pushing through the Safety of Rwanda Bill, which partially disapplied sections of the HRA. However, it fell short of comprehensive reform, leaving significant loopholes (something I made clear in my oral evidence to the Equality and Human Rights Commission). Whether it could have succeeded remains a moot point — the Bill languished in the Lords, and Sunak called an election before it could be implemented, perhaps aware it was unlikely to deliver results. 

So why didn’t the Tories just scrap the HRA? Because the One Nation faction of the party, obsessed with Britain’s international image, prevented it. They argued that abolishing the HRA would damage Britain’s global standing and tarnish the legacy of early ECHR advocates like Winston Churchill and David Maxwell Fyfe. But these arguments were absurd. The ECHR has changed drastically since Churchill’s day, and it’s implausible that either he or Fyfe would still support it. 

Sadly, the modern Tory party is far more concerned with its global image than actually tackling the crisis at home. They allowed the illegal migration loophole to fester, all while missing the chance to reboot the system. Sure, Dominic Raab made an attempt to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, but it was nothing more than a chaotic patchwork, riddled with contradictions, and always destined for the scrapheap. Ultimately, the Tories lacked the spine to make the necessary changes.

The British Commonwealth

Any mention of the word “ideology” tends to send shivers down the spines of the usual SW1 crowd. For them, it’s a dirty word, suggesting an abstract, dogmatic worldview that’s disconnected from the nitty-gritty of everyday life. They prefer to focus on the pragmatic, the strategic, the art of political manoeuvring, etc. 

But look closer at Boris Johnson’s vocal support for the Henry Jackson Society’s Global Britain agenda, Priti Patel’s spirited defence of humanitarian visas, and the Tories’ refusal to tackle the Human Rights Act. These actions tell a different story.

In fact, I would argue that the Conservative Party’s interpretation of Brexit was fundamentally different from how most British voters saw it. For the public, Brexit was about British nationalism: a clear mandate for a restrictive immigration policy and putting British interests first. But for the political elite, it became a victory for the UK’s relationship with the Commonwealth, and a signal to deepen ties with countries like India, Pakistan, and Nigeria. 

This policy found its clearest expression in the aggressive recruitment of international students from Commonwealth nations like India, alongside a refusal to place caps or stricter controls on family visas — a well-known engine for chain migration from non-EU countries. Reviewing the archives of the Foreign Affairs Committee reveals how immigration policy was deliberately tied to this agenda. 

For instance, during a session titled Global Britain and India, former Home Secretary Priti Patel posed a revealing question to Mark Field MP:

You have mentioned Prime Minister Modi a couple of times. He is the architect of the term “living bridge”, and effectively[sic] usage of the Indian diaspora community around the world, not only in the UK, but more broadly, has helped to strengthen ties with key countries. Do you think our own Prime Minister understands the significance of the living bridge and why, domestically, diaspora communities matter when it comes to bilateral relationships?

Patel’s framing is striking. By quoting Modi’s vision of migrants as “living bridges,” she makes it clear how immigration is linked to the UK’s foreign policy goals under the banner of Global Britain. Once in power, Patel brought this vision to life with vigour. Loosening visa rules and expanding opportunities for migration from Commonwealth nations became cornerstones of her tenure. And the consequences? Well, the numbers tell their own story.

Ideology, part II: labour shortages

The second ideological pillar that propped up the Tories’ mass immigration policy is the myth that migrants are essential to filling labour shortages. The argument goes that without an influx of foreign workers, the economy will grind to a halt because there are jobs Brits simply won’t do. I remember debating Guto Harri, Boris Johnson’s former director of communications, on the BBC, and he pushed this argument hard. I have also heard it echoed by former Cabinet ministers, especially when addressing the Confederation of British Industry.

This belief, while widely repeated, is extremely flawed. Genuine shortages in market economies are rare and typically confined to elite jobs requiring niche skills or company-specific experience. But these positions don’t demand mass immigration; targeted recruitment strategies suffice.

The reality is much simpler — and more inconvenient for those in Westminster who push this narrative. Importing 500,000 migrants to fill 500,000 vacancies doesn’t solve the problem; it merely creates an equal number of new shortages. Why? Because migrants, like everyone else, are consumers as well as workers — they need housing, food, healthcare, and other goods and services, all of which must be provided by others. This is exactly what occurred during the New Labour years, and history is repeating itself now. 

Today, we’ve got around 850,000 “vacancies” sitting in Britain’s economy, despite us letting in every Tom, Dick, and Harry for decades. So, the idea that more immigrants magically means fewer job shortages is simply a myth. It’s rooted in what economists call the “lump of labour fallacy” — the mistaken belief that there’s a fixed amount of work to do. In reality, the demand for work is potentially infinite: it’s like trying to fill a bottomless well with buckets of water — the more you throw in, the more you need to keep throwing. 

Why, then, does this economic myth persist among Tory elites? One explanation is the quiet belief that British workers are too lazy or entitled to do unpleasant jobs. But this view is wrongheaded. Many British workers avoid such roles because wages, kept artificially low by immigration, don’t justify the grind. In a healthy economy, companies will respond by offering higher pay, better perks, or opportunities for training and career progression. In other words, they must make unattractive jobs worth doing. 

But when immigration serves as a shortcut for employers, it stifles the competitive forces that would otherwise benefit the British workforce. Why? Because workers from poorer countries often settle for lower pay and are less likely to unionise or shop around for new employment. Worse still, the glut of cheap labour stunts businesses’ willingness to innovate or adopt productivity-boosting tech, keeping the economy stuck in low gear and leaving everyone worse off in the long run. 

Then there’s the cozy relationship Tory elites enjoy with pro-immigration lobbyists, who camp out in Westminster and sing the same tune. This constant schmoozing skews their judgment, blurring the line between what’s good for Britain and what’s just good for big business. The old adage, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” clearly doesn’t apply when one side gets all the perks while the general public pays the price. Still, many Tory MPs, entrenched in the Westminster bubble, seem blind to these realities. Which begs the question: are there structural flaws in the Westminster model that not only allow these harmful ideologies to flourish but actively fuel them? The answer is a resounding Yes. 

Perverse incentives, part I: Janus-faced politics

“The cobbler’s children have no shoes” is an old saying that dates back to at least the 16th century – yet it feels tailor-made for the modern Tory Party. The proverb speaks to a bitter irony: the cobbler, so consumed by making shoes for others, leaves his own children barefoot. It’s a vivid image of neglect, and nowhere is this paradox more alive than in SW1. The Conservatives, obsessively catering to external interests, have abandoned their own voters.

And then there’s Janus, the two-headed Roman deity who peers simultaneously into the past and the future. He is the unwitting mascot of modern politics, where saying one thing to voters while doing the opposite in power has become a grotesque art form.

This rot has been decades in the making, thanks in part to our first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system. FPTP forces ambitious types into the big parties, even if they’re ideologically miles apart from their members. As a result, plenty of Tories in Westminster have little time for small-c conservative values — they joined because it was the fastest route to power. Over time, this has warped the party’s DNA, leaving it increasingly out of touch with its voters, especially on international law and the Human Rights Act.

FPTP has also stymied competition, making it very difficult for restrictionist parties like Reform to achieve a critical mass of MPs. This is because FPTP encourages tactical voting: people often choose the lesser evil to “keep the other lot out”, rather than voting for a party that aligns with their values. The result? A two-party system where both sides increasingly look like each other, leaving voters with little real choice. This breeds a kind of cartel politics, where the big parties quietly agree not to go to war over the issues that matter.

The party of Churchill, now more interested in ticking diversity boxes than listening to the people who once backed them 

The Tory leadership has turbocharged this drift with its iron grip on candidate selection. Anyone pushing for a tougher stance on immigration is either cast aside or pushed towards an unwinnable seat. Talking about “managing” migration or attracting “the brightest and best” is acceptable, but calling for a cap to balance inflows and outflows? That’s beyond the pale. There are exceptions, like Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien, but their proposals came far too late to change anything.

The same applies when it comes to culture: you can discuss immigration’s impact within the narrow confines of economics, but broach the downsides of diversity and you’re immediately cast out as a pariah. Take Lee Anderson, the working-class ex-miner who was unceremoniously booted out of the Tory party for clumsily suggesting Islamists had “control” over Sadiq Khan. Anderson’s comments were poorly judged, but Sunak bragging about his expulsion in Prime Ministers’ Questions was pure theatre designed to please the London commentariat.

And Sunak himself? As Chancellor, he commissioned a “Diversity Built Britain” 50p coin. A trivial gesture, perhaps, but a telling one – a moment of jarring propaganda that showcases the modern Tory obsession with jumping on the latest trendy bandwagon. The party of Churchill, now more interested in ticking diversity boxes than listening to the people who once backed them.

Meanwhile, the broader conservative movement is in tatters. Most grassroots conservatives are scattered, underfunded, and poorly organised, while pro-open-borders lobbyists are highly concentrated, well-funded, and within a stone’s throw of Westminster. Politicians, predictably, gravitate toward the latter. After all, lobbyists wield cash and influence, while local activists struggle to get a hearing. This is made worse by MPs that look ahead to life after politics: the prospect of getting a cushy directorship, a fat consultancy gig, or a stint on the international lecture circuit. Rocking the boat by championing restrictionist policies can scupper those dreams. 

Perverse incentives, part II: Not in My Terms in Office (NIMTO)

Modern British politics is mired in a peculiar blend of short-termism and headline-chasing that prioritises optics over outcomes. Politicians today are optimised for the 24/7 media cycle, not policymaking, and their careers are often condensed into fleeting bursts of activity. Dominic Cummings — Westminster’s perennial enfant terrible — has pointed this out repeatedly.

 Many MPs, especially backbenchers, are tireless to a fault. Their lives are a whirlwind of constituency surgeries, local events, and endless attempts to keep stakeholders onside. Yet this relentless hustle belies an inconvenient truth: politics is Hollywood for ugly people. For too many, the adrenaline of engaging with the press gallery trumps the slow, often dull grind of governance. 

This obsession with short-term optics is reflected in who ministers hire when they take office. The so-called Special Advisors (SPADs) are a curious breed. Far from being domain experts or seasoned policy wonks, most SPADs are young careerists with backgrounds in public relations or political communications. Their raison d’être is not governance but spin, with their primary mission being to manipulate the media narrative, score cheap wins against rivals, and sway floating voters in key marginals.

The problem? These media whisperers are often comically out of their depth. Lacking expertise in the policy areas they’re assigned to, SPADs approach governance as a PR exercise. This intellectual shallowness leads to bad decisions or, worse, no decisions at all. Ministers, of course, face no real accountability for the failures of their protégés. The SPAD system, acting as a kind of patronage network, ensures ideological loyalty over competence. Imagine Goldman Sachs hiring analysts who can’t do basic arithmetic; in Westminster, this absurdity is business as usual.

This culture of short-term thinking feeds into a broader phenomenon: Not in My Terms of Office (NIMTO). Politicians shy away from tackling deep-rooted problems because real reform requires time, money, and a willingness to upset entrenched interests. Crucially, the political pay-off might not materialise during their tenure, leaving them vulnerable to backlash without reaping the rewards.

… genuine reform comes with significant short-term costs

Take immigration policy as a case study. Ministers know that deep, systemic reforms — like capping international student visas or tackling exploitative migration pathways — are necessary. Yet they balk at the prospect of disrupting the status quo. Why? Because genuine reform comes with significant short-term costs. In the case of higher education (HE), for instance, foreign students pay eye-watering fees — £20,000 to £30,000 a year — that subsidise domestic students and keep bloated, inefficient universities afloat. Politicians fear that reducing these numbers will trigger a cascade of negative consequences: higher fees for UK students, bankruptcies for weaker institutions, job losses across campus-adjacent businesses, and a media outcry from vested interests.

This reluctance to act also stems from the outsized influence of concentrated interest groups. University bureaucrats, local businesses, and research communities rely heavily on international students to pad their budgets. Politicians, who dread the blowback from upsetting these groups, choose the path of least resistance. The BBC and other media outlets, always on the lookout for a juicy human-interest story, amplify the grievances of those affected, further deterring bold action.

Yet the status quo is fundamentally flawed. The higher education sector, with its Mickey Mouse degrees and debt-ridden graduates, is a bloated boondoggle. Vocational training and apprenticeships, which could help school leavers enter the workforce debt-free and skilled, are neglected in favour of turning universities into de facto migration pathways. This does little for national unity or the long-term integrity of the British state. The idea that endless streams of international students equate to economic growth is a fallacy. While elite institutions benefit from attracting top STEM talent, the current system props up substandard universities and exacerbates housing pressures, fraud, and grade inflation.

The solution? Elite universities should remain elite, while the focus shifts to vocational pathways and domestic skill-building. Politicians must embrace dispersed, long-term benefits over concentrated, short-term gains that favour a select few. Yet this requires courage – a quality sorely lacking in Westminster.

Until politicians prioritise governance over optics, Britain will continue to suffer from half-measures and missed opportunities

The NIMTO mentality extends far beyond higher education. Take the Treasury’s reluctance to raise wages for care workers. Doing so would stabilise a sector in crisis and alleviate pressure on staff turnover, but it would also mean a reallocation of funds — anathema to risk-averse SW1. Similarly, the Tory timidity on human rights law stems from the social penalties of rocking the boat. Proposing radical changes risks exclusion from the trendy dinner parties and a barrage of criticism from the establishment media.

Ultimately, Westminster is locked in a vicious cycle of cowardice and complacency. Until politicians prioritise governance over optics, Britain will continue to suffer from half-measures and missed opportunities. What we need are leaders unafraid to break with convention, even if it means ruffling feathers in the short term. Whether SW1 is capable of producing such figures remains to be seen.

Final thoughts

To understand why politicians keep failing to deliver on their promises, we must also understand the nuts and bolts of the Westminster system. Journalists and think-tankers alike are often so immersed in the rituals of SW1 that they miss the forest for the trees. They mistake proximity to power for insight. Much like cattle grazing blissfully unaware of their ultimate fate, many political observers fail to see the bigger picture. 

So, what is the bigger picture here? The bigger picture is that while politicians may claim to heed public opinion, their decisions are far more shaped by ideology and incentives. In a system tilted towards two-party dominance and the interests of well-connected elites, these tendencies spiral out of control.

until our political and media classes stop making excuses for mass immigration … this cycle of failure will just repeat

This was glaringly evident under Johnson’s post-Brexit government. Ideologically, the Tories clung to a mix of imperial nostalgia and a globalist foreign policy — completely out of step with the average voter. That’s why we got humanitarian visas and pro-Commonwealth migration policies, even as the public demanded tighter controls. And the Human Rights Act? They couldn’t touch it, terrified of upsetting their cocktail party crowd or facing sneers from their metropolitan peers.

On the economic front, the Tories were driven by bad ideas about labour markets — obsessing over so-called “shortages” and tying economic growth to population increases. Worse still, Westminster’s entrenched NIMTO culture made bold reforms politically toxic. Instead of restructuring higher education or properly valuing care workers, they kicked the can down the road — leaving the system broken and the public increasingly frustrated. Immigration became a sticking plaster, slapped on to cover systemic failures rather than to genuinely grease the wheels of the economy.

They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, and most of the time, it is. But until our political and media classes stop making excuses for mass immigration — with their tired “we had no choice” routine — this cycle of failure will just repeat. Over and over again.