MIGRATION WATCH UK
In December 2020, the co-founder and President of Migration Watch, Lord Andrew Green, writing in Conservative Home, warned that “taking back control” would be meaningless if ministers built a post-Brexit system that kept numbers high. Migration Watch expected immigration to surge. He pointed out that millions of jobs were being opened to global recruitment; salary and qualification thresholds were being lowered; the requirement to look locally first was being abandoned; there would be no limit on the number of recruits from abroad; and, together with absurdly generous study routes, these changes would put rocket boosters under inflows. Meanwhile, employers would turn to cheaper, readily available migrant labour rather than training and investing in the domestic workforce.
Lord Green was, of course, bang on the money.
In the wake of the scandalously loose new points-based system, migration surged, culminating in net migration approaching one million (906,000) in the year to June 2023. Provisional figures for the year to December 2024 show net migration at 431,000, and still catastrophically high. Indeed, this is around double the average net migration of the 2010s and far above the level inherited by New Labour in 1997.
Writing about the consequences of the disastrous points-based system in September 2022, also in Conservative Home, our chairman, Alp Mehmet, ended the article with this:
“However, sending out search parties overseas to get them [workers] to come, à la Blair, to do the lower-skill work, often to shore up struggling businesses, reduce labour costs, and bear down on wages (particularly at the lower end), is not the way to do it. It could well cost the Conservatives the next election.”
Didn’t it do just that? The Tory government’s belated 2023–2024 course corrections (restricting most student dependants, tightening Health and Care visa rules on dependants and Care Quality Commission oversight, and raising the Skilled Worker salary threshold to £38,700) were necessary and set us on the path needed to regain control of immigration and our borders. Sir Keir Starmer’s government has so far paid lip service to addressing the massive levels of migration – legal and illegal. They have even all but claimed credit for the reduction of net migration to 430,000, though they have had nothing to do with the reduction. In any case, net migration is still much too high. At current levels, there is no way enough homes will be built to accommodate new arrivals, let alone provide for those who want their own home or have been waiting for years for social housing. Services will remain under increasing pressure. Moreover, there is no public consent for these mammoth levels of migration.
Lord Green wrote in 2020, “The government can reduce net migration, but only if it chooses to.” So far, we have heard nothing that suggests the government has the desire to do so. Should they fail, Sir Keir Starmer’s government, like its predecessor, will pay a heavy price at the ballot box. Either they control both legal and illegal immigration, or they will be deservedly turfed out of office at the first opportunity.
This week, we suggest you write to your MP about the decision made by West Midlands PolicTe to ban Jewish Tel Aviv Maccabi football fans from attending a football game against Aston Villa in Birmingham. You can write anything you like, but we have provided a template below for your convenience.
You can verify your local MP here: https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP.
“Dear [NAME OF MP],
I am one of your constituents, living at [YOUR ADDRESS HERE].
I am writing to express my shock at the decision by West Midlands Police to prevent predominantly Jewish Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. supporters from attending a football match against Aston Villa in Birmingham on November 6th due to safety concerns. MP for Perry Bar, Mr Ayoub Khan has welcomed the decision, as has Mr Jeremy Corbyn. The Prime Minister has said the decision was wrong. May I know where you stand on the matter?
Kind regards,
[YOUR NAME HERE]
If you receive a response from your MP and are comfortable sharing it, please forward it on to us – we are always interested!
862 people crossed the Channel this week, with numbers dropping off towards the end of the week due to poor conditions.
Data and Insights Manager at the Adam Smith Institute, Emma Schubart, has written an interesting X thread on how the new Taliban-led government in Afghanistan is facilitating passport fraud:
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s the intelligence that the British State has chosen to ignore for years, putting the nation in grave danger🧵: https://t.co/T8nvq47aRR
— Emma Schubart (@ESchubart) October 13, 2025
And Conservative MP Katie Lam has written a thread on the origin of rights in Britain, refuting assertions that our freedoms originate from Blair-era constitutional changes:
What a load of rubbish.
Our rights in Britain do not come from the Human Rights Act or the ECHR.
In fact, before it was wildly overinterpreted by Strasbourg judges, the ECHR exported British rights to the rest of Europe.
— Katie Lam (@Katie_Lam_MP) October 13, 2025
Finally, political commentator Gavin Rice is astonished by an interview with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in which Mr Johnson admits his government deliberately boosted migration to reduce wages:
There’s 3 incredible admissions here.
1) The Government caved to HMT advice on immigration policy rather than leading.
2) He says on the record that HMT saw immigration as an counter-inflation measure.
3) HMT therefore admits immigration puts downwards pressure on wages.
— Gavin Rice (@gavinantonyrice) October 14, 2025
The Conservative Woman requested permission to republish last week’s newsletter article explaining new immigration policies announced by the major political parties over conference season; you can view the article here.
What Reform and the Conservatives had to say about illegal immigration and asylum was welcome, if expected. However, we were disappointed that their focus was confined largely to this aspect of the immigration problem, with scant attention given to overall immigration, which is more than 20 times the number who have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year.
There was no mention of the fact that net migration added more than 2.5 million to our population in the five years to mid-2024, or that our population grew by 755,000 in the year to mid-2024 – 98 per cent of that increase due to immigration – with every local authority in England bar one seeing growth. The Labour Party, for its part, also largely avoided addressing this wider issue.
Matthew Bowles has a thoughtful and insightful piece in the Critic on the practicalities of implementing American-style visa fees in the UK:
“Trump’s H-1B fee, as political theatre, has already done its job. It has forced a debate about whether migration should be rationed by queues, quotas or cash. Britain, with migration still running far too high, cannot ignore that debate. A calibrated policy — higher surcharges for dependents, premium fees for non-shortage jobs, exemptions where the need is greatest, and perhaps a limited auction pilot — would deliver fairness without self-harm.
The principle is simple. Access to Britain’s opportunities is valuable. Those who want them should pay, and pay in a way that disciplines demand, reveals genuine shortages, and makes the cost visible.”
And Louise Perry has written an article on the disappearance of London’s white working class:
“You see, the cockneys have mostly left London. Between 2001 and 2021, census records show that the number of “White British” people in London fell from 4.3 million to 3.2 million, at a time when the overall population of the city grew substantially. Political scientist Eric Kaufmann believes that this exodus of nearly a million people was almost entirely made up of cockneys, who have since settled in Essex, Kent, and other surrounding counties. It is obvious to anyone who lives in London that the city is now composed almost exclusively of affluent white British people—who earn 50 percent more than those outside of the capital—and ethnic minorities, some poor and some very rich. Vestiges of cockney culture continue to circulate in the British mainstream, particularly in film and TV intended for an international audience, but the cockney London of previous centuries is gone. The capital doesn’t have a white working class anymore”
SOURCE: Migration Watch UK newsletter
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