Of the rich catalogue of Tory failures in our 14 years in government, none were as egregious - or more totemic - than our failure on immigration.
Our failure there was the primary reason for voters switching to Reform, was in the top five reasons they switched to Labour - and was even cited as the third-highest reason for 2019 Tories to switch to the Lib Dems.
Their outrage is more than understandable. The party pledged to cut net migration to the "tens of thousands" in its 2010, 2015, and 2017 manifestos—a goal it completely failed to achieve. The 2019 manifesto took a softer tone than previous commitments but still promised to reduce overall numbers, ultimately proving to be yet another missed opportunity.
In our 2010 campaign, we pledged to reduce migration to the "tens of thousands" and repeatedly reinforced that commitment. Had we fulfilled that promise within two years and maintained it, total migration over our remaining 12 years in power would have been no more than 1.3 million. Instead, it has soared to 4.5 million. We vowed to cut numbers—yet they have quadrupled.
Few have hand as much a hand in this as Priti Patel who, in her four-year stint as home secretary, designed and implemented Britain’s most liberal immigration system ever.
After campaigning on a platform of controlling and reducing migration, Priti Patel became home secretary in 2019. Speaking at that year’s party conference, she declared that, “as home secretary at this defining moment in our country’s history,” she bore “a particular responsibility when it comes to taking back control.”
What did ‘Taking back control’ result in? Let’s have a look at the data;
Net migration UP from 224,000 to 718,000.
Small boat crossings UP from 1,843 to 45,755.
Student visas UP from 268,674 to 485,758.
Student dependents UP from 16,047 to 134,571.
The points-based immigration system she implemented lowered the skill threshold for skilled workers, allowing new applicants to qualify with an A-Level instead of a degree. Additionally, the minimum salary requirement was set at £25,600—a curious decision considering that, just a year before Priti Patel became Home Secretary, government-commissioned research from Oxford Economics found that migrant households only made a net fiscal contribution when earning between £30,000 and £40,000.
Student visas presented another contentious issue. In 2019, the government reinstated the two-year post-study work visa, which had been previously scrapped by Theresa May. This move went against the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee, which had warned that it could increase low-wage migration and encourage universities to prioritize employment prospects over educational quality. Despite these concerns, the policy was implemented.
Priti has faced sustained criticism for this, including from yours truly. When she ran her leadership campaign, I wrote pieces highlighting her failure on immigration and how dangerous this would be for the party. This, resulted in some heavy internal criticism; but her recent appearance on Harry Cole’s Never Mind The Ballots highlights why I went so hard on this issue.
Challenged to to apologise for promising to take back control of borders before 'throwing them open', Patel resolutely defended her record.
What follows is a catalogue of mistruths, including that the system was successfully selecting the ‘brightest and the best’, that this isn’t a problem because it is ‘legal migration’ and that the increase was caused by Ukranian and BNO visas.
Perhaps the most egregious argument was that this immigration surge - now known as the Boriswave - contributes to the economy. Yet, as Sam Ashworth-Hayes has shown, the last three years of care worker migration alone will cost roughly £61bn net – and if anything, this is likely to be an understatement. The Centre for Migration Control has found that dependant migrants let in by the last government will cost the UK £35bn by 2028, meaning this year over 4 million Brits will be paying income tax solely to cover the bill.
Patel also claimed that the NHS was dependent on this migration surge, and that doctors and nursed were needed in the wake of the Covid pandemic. This is an argument she has made before, on Chopper’s Political Podcast; yet the reality is that under her system, health and care visas for doctors and nurses barely rose.
This has left me absolutely speechless. Patel continues to be totally unrepentant and factually wrong - before, incredibly, she demands an apology from people criticising the rise! This is one of the most catastrophically bad interviews I have ever seen - and one that is totally out of step with the new Conservatives.
Indeed, it must be out of step. If we are serious about winning back credibility, it needs to be won on immigration first; this was our greatest failure in the eyes of the electorate (quite rightly). We need to offer them more than just an apology and a promise that we’re learned out lesson. We spent the last 14 years doing that. With Reform offering a more credible alternative than ever, that simply won’t wash. When we attack Labour for their immigration failures we leave ourselves to obvious attacks by Starmer for our ‘open-borders experiment’.
Having a Shadow Foreign Secretary responsible for our ‘open-borders experiment’ continue to boldly defend it is not going to win us a hearing from the millions of voters who abandoned us for the reason of that very same betrayal.
The new leadership must mark a clear separation between the Tories of the past and the Tories of the future. Any Conservative party that hopes to re-occupy No.10 must completely denounce the Boriswave and all figures involved. Repudiation of the policy can be done by suspending Indefinite Leave to Remain.
But we will never win back trust as long as a figure remains on our frontbenches who defends the Boriswave, if for no other reason that protecting her own reputation. When we have made and broken so many promises on immigration, and when such a prominent figure is still so unrepentant, it is unreasonable to expect the electorate to listen to our promises. It is ludicrous to expect them to believe we’ve changed.
We cannot - we must not - defend what we did. And that is why Priti Patel must resign, or be sacked.
Patel was often overruled in Cabinet (when the penny dropped over immigration) and Braverman was overruled directly by Sunak. It's not just Patel that should resign.
Tom, are you aware of anyone working with a sympathetic MP(s) to draft a Bill for the House to revise ILR, and force a vote?