The Tories have been trailing Labour in the polls for months but now things are starting to look really dire. The latest YouGov poll has them on 20 percent – a full 27 points behind Labour. What’s more, a seat projection based on this poll yields an overwhelming Labour majority, with the Tories winning just 12 seats. Electoral oblivion, in other words.
How did Britain’s ‘natural party of government’ lose the support of so many voters? Listing their policy failures certainly isn’t difficult: lockdown, vaccine mandates, Russia sanctions, Net Zero etc. But one issue really stands out: immigration.
After all, most of those other policies were reasonably popular with the party’s base. Many conservatives were in favour of lockdown, in favour of vaccine mandates, in favour of Russia sanctions and in favour of Net Zero. But one policy they’ve consistently opposed is mass migration.
Ever since David Cameron announced before the 2010 election that he would limit immigration to “tens of thousands a year”, the Tories have been promising to do just that. And they’ve utterly – utterly – failed.
Here’s a chart plotting net migration to the UK; four separate pledges the Tories have made to bring immigration down to the “tens of thousands” are highlighted. As you can see, these pledges were completely worthless. Net migration remained above 200,000 throughout the entire period. And as a matter of fact, it has since risen above 500,000.