Shabana Mahmood will be pleased. New Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows that net migration fell to 171,000 in 2025, the lowest level (outside of Covid) in any calendar year since 2008. On the current trajectory, it will fall below 100,000 for the first time since 1997 this year or next. Job done, then? […]
Fresh off the plane from Denmark, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has embarked on another Scandi-inspired immigration and asylum policy blitz, much to the consternation of some of her parliamentary colleagues. Among her announcements is a deceptively simple plan to impose visa bans on several countries whose nationals are abusing study visas to gain entry and […]
With the air of a parent trying, but not quite managing to connect with their wayward teenager, Keir Starmer is attempting to keep up with Britain’s shifting Overton window. In his days as a human rights lawyer, Starmer would not have dreamed that in years to come, he’d be calling on his European neighbours to […]
The inability to secure our borders against large-scale illegal migration is arguably the most acute failure of the British state in generations. Certainly, it is the failure that is uppermost in the minds of voters. It played a major part in burying the Conservatives in the 2024 general election and could easily do the same […]
There is widespread public exasperation over the failure of the Labour Government and its Conservative predecessor to deal effectively with illegal immigration. Such feelings are entirely justified. It’s almost a tautology to say that if you think it’s right that something should be illegal then it’s also right that it should be prevented from happening. […]
Amid the distraction of whether Nigel Farage’s latest party is racist, it’s worth casting your minds back a decade. Amid the rancour of the EU referendum, those wanting to leave were caricatured as a mix between ‘little Englanders’, whose horizons barely stretched beyond the next green and pleasant field, and imperial nostalgists desperate to get […]
As CapX fan favourite Karl Marx once said: ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.’ This may be one of the only correct statements ever uttered by that awful little man, but it really has proven true this week as Labour’s latest attempts to ‘stop the boats’ have run aground. This week, an […]
At the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming this week, central bank leaders from Japan, the Eurozone and the UK warned that their economies need further immigration in order to fuel growth. According to their warning, ageing populations and declining birth rates threaten long-term economic growth and price stability across advanced economies, and without a […]
Would you judge the health of a football team by how many players it could cram on its books? Sure, the number of players available goes up, but if none of them can pass, shoot or defend properly, it hardly counts as progress. That, in essence, is the trick played whenever pundits conflate headline GDP […]
Mass deportations. That is what Nigel Farage has promised, taking to the stage to announce his new plan next to a huge prop of an airport departures board showing deportation flights to Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iran among others. Operation Restoring Justice, as Reform UK are calling this, is intended to remove hundreds of thousands of […]
When Britain decides to admit someone as an immigrant, it’s making a deliberate choice about who deserves the privilege of living here. That choice should be based on clear benefits to the country and existing residents – logically, people who improve our situation, not maintain the status quo. Yet a recent New Statesman piece treats […]
‘The sanest days are mad’, sang Morrissey in 1994. Hear, hear, Moz; 31 years later and European states are once again at war and tensions in the Middle East have reached fever pitch. Following Hamas’ massacre of Jews on October 7 2023, Israel has sought to neuter not only Hamas in Gaza, but also the […]
America’s top universities have long been magnets for global talent. But now, they’re being dragged into a political storm – and Britain should seize the moment. On May 5, US Education Secretary Linda McMahon barred Harvard from seeking federal research grants. Further threats followed: to over $1 billion in grant funding, and even to Harvard’s […]
The best thing about this Government – perhaps the only good thing at all – is the ambition to build 1.5 million homes over the course of this Parliament. Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner could and should increase this target, and lean on Sadiq Khan to get a lot more building in London, […]
There has been an undeniable, perhaps still underappreciated, shift in British politics. In just a few years, we’ve gone from James Forsyth – the former Spectator journalist and key Sunak confidante in No.10 – declaring that immigration is no longer ‘a political problem’, to the Leader of the Opposition calling for mass deportations and Reform, […]
The Government’s new immigration white paper contains several welcome measures to tighten up visa rules and strengthen English language requirements. It is an attempt to respond to growing public concern about sky-high immigration levels, which polling finds to be the primary motivating factor for voters to back Reform UK. But despite the tough rhetoric, Keir […]
