The Boriswave; Whatever it takes

The sneer of cold command

I want to begin this piece with a section from an interview Donald Trump gave with Time Magazine, in which he is asked about his migration plans.

Interviewer: So you're saying there won't be new camps, more camps to hold detained migrants?

Trump: Well, there might be. Whatever it takes to get them out. I don't care. Honestly, whatever it takes to get them out. Again, I'll do it absolutely within the confines of the law, but if it needs new camps, but I hope we're not going to need too many because I want to get them out, and I don't want them sitting in camp for the next 20 years. I want them out, and the countries have got to take them back, and if they don't take them back, we won't do business with those countries, and we will tariff those countries very substantially. When they send products in, they will have substantial tariffs, and it's going to make it very hard for them to do business with us.

British politicians should take note: ‘Whatever it takes’ is exactly the stance British people want their leader to take on immigration. The wrinkled lip; the sneer of cold command.

Too often, immigration restrictionists in Britain seem unprepared for the realities of what restricting immigration means in practice; think back, for example, to the proposed changes to the spousal visa requirements. This was a raising minimum income threshold in order to apply for a spouse visa; originally set by Theresa May in 2012 at £18,600 a year, it was proposed to rise to £29,000 in April of this year. The threshold would then go on to more than double from its original rate, rising to £38,700 in early 2025.

There was a large amount of hand-wringing about this. At the time, Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley - who regularly, and ably, writes in favour of immigration restriction - took against the policy, tweeting;

So, if you fall in love & marry someone from overseas, that’s the income you need to settle them here. It’s very high. Something like 75% of us earn less than that. Is it fair to limit family formation to the rich? Is it conservative potentially to divide families?

Here, we see the rubber hitting the road. Stanley’s issue with the fairness of the policy is focussed on the family, not the nation; because £38,700 was not a figure plucked from the air. It was broadly the correct figure in order for the Exchequer to break even. In fact, it’s arguable it should have been set higher, given how out-of-date the figures used to calculate it were (Britain’s immigration data desert creating poor policy again).

So this was a measure that was aimed at preventing people who weren’t net contributors to the Exchequer from arriving in Britain and becoming net drains on the Exchequer. This is a policy move most immigration restrictionists, such as Stanely, would have supported in the abstract - but not when confronted with the reality of what an immigration restiction like that might do. Yes, measures to prevent people entering the country will prevent people entering the country. That’s the point.

This highlights a growing division on the Right, which is largely drawn along generational lines. As I wrote in my piece on Denis Villeneuve’s film Sicario, the line is between what is ‘right’ and what is ‘necessary’ in managing the affairs of the nation.

Compare, for example, Stanley’s squeamishness on spousal visas with the most recent immigration restriction proposals.

Since 2019, the rate of immigration has been a step level above anything seen before. This phenomenon is known as the Boriswave, a concept that is so widespread it now has it’s own Wikipedia page.

The vast majority of these arrivals have not arrived for work - and those that did are largely low-wage, low-productivity workers. The pressure this migratory wave has already placed on Britain, and the downstream means that for some, including me, the status quo is simply untenable.

This has prompted calls to extend Indefinite Leave to Remain requirements for the Boriswave. The problems of the immigration system are now so large that the situation calls for more than preventive policies. Solutions must be offered to fix past problems, as well as prevent them in the future. Far from being a preventative measure, this is palliative.

This is not to mention the potentially terminal damage to the reputation of the Conservative Party. 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’. This is dangerous territory; nothing inflames people like hypocrisy, and we are gifting him chances to remind people that we should not be trusted on immigration. This is very stupid!

If we want to overcome this, we need to show we are interested in righting wrongs. Suspending ILR is a politically obvious way of doing this, by marking a clear separation between the Tories of the past and the Tories of the future. It goes further than saying ‘sorry’. It says ‘we got this wrong, and we owe it to you to try and put this right.’ It marks a choice between what is ‘right’ and what is ‘necessary’.

For 14 years, the Tories talked a good game on immigration. But they were just too scared of being seen as ‘nasty’ to implement the policies that were necessary to actually bring immigration down. That failure may, yet, kill off the party.

And to what avail? People who hated us called us out for our ‘divisive rhetoric’ on immigration regardless; we might as well have delivered what the British people asked us to.

Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine! I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.