The centre won’t hold. Migration is the reason

‘The Conservatives must govern from the centre”. It’s becoming a mantra and one you will be hearing an awful lot more of in the coming weeks.

Strictly speaking, they won’t be governing from anywhere in a few days time, but expect the battle for the future shape of Tory opposition to grow even fiercer after Thursday. Former Conservative minister and Rest is Politics co-host Rory Stewart warned that Tories shouldn’t try to appeal to the “populist Right” if Labour forms the next government.

“You have to retake the centre”, he insists. Given he has stated he may well vote for the Green Party, a coalition of Just Stop Oil zealots and Tankies who are about as “central” in their politics as Ho Chi Minh, we might safely ignore the Old Etonian’s pleas for moderation. But Stewart is not the only voice in what is soon to be the Wilderness. He is backed by fellow ex-Tory David Gauke, soon-to-be ex-Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and about every voice in the centre-Right commentariat who is about to find they have an ex-address book.

This rush for the centre isn’t only a Tory phenomenon. Sir Keir has parked his tanks in what he considers to be the middle of British politics. The received dogma in Labour seems to be that Blairism warmed up with a dash of Green sauce is enough to salvage British democracy. Our future environment secretary Ed Miliband (gulp!) believes that “progressive international leadership” on climate change holds the answer to tackling populism. Good luck with that.

Stewart is certainly right that many small and large-C conservatives have been alienated by Nigel Farage’s remarks on Russia, and by the cranks and racists evidently admitted into the Reform ranks without proper vetting. Governing within the window where most voters are is not a bad idea electorally at all. But there is one, gaping problem: the centre-ground is not where these people imagine it is.

Perhaps the policy that demonstrates this most clearly is the issue of immigration. Farage has been criticised for making this the “immigration election” since in polling, immigration ranks as the third most important election issue overall (behind cost-of-living and the NHS).

Crucially, it is the single most important issue cited by 2019 Tory voters and Tory-Reform switchers. Such analyses ignore how migration exacerbates other concerns, like housing. A recent Centre for Policy Studies report found that we need to build at least 515,000 homes in England each year just to meet current demand. To misquote Clinton adviser James Carville, “it’s migration, stupid!”

Where centrist Tories certainly have a point is that much of the blame lies with Boris Johnson, under whose “points-based” system net migration reached unprecedented highs; such that one in every 30 people currently in Britain arrived in the past two years.

Rishi Sunak has belatedly tried to undo such Boris-era excesses; limiting the dependents migrants can bring over and tightening student visas. But to the extent that there has been a Tory U-turn, it owes much to fear of Farage.

Consider the picture across the West. Yesterday, the Netherlands’ new Cabinet was sworn in, with Geert Wilders as the Kingmaker. President Biden’s failure on border control has proved an extraordinary gift to Donald Trump.

French “centrism” has been thoroughly chastised at the polls; particularly by the young, who voted overwhelmingly for Marine Le Pen. TikTok is awash with Zoomers sharing thirst-videos of her deputy Jordan Bardella, and the viral anti-migrant song Je Partira Pas (“I won’t leave”). All of this would have been inconceivable if governing parties had taken the scarcely-radical step of listening.

It is important to recognise that voters haven’t simply been duped, or dog-whistled into action; but are often responding rationally to changes that impoverish taxpayers and fuel social unrest. To take one example, a recent Dutch study placed the annual net costs of non-Western migration at €17 billion; a vast sum for a nation of less than 20 million people.

A recent country-by-country attitudes poll by BVA Xsight documents this growing hostility to migration across Europe; 70 per cent believe that their country admits too many migrants; with the greatest resistance found at the forefront of the crisis in Greece, at 90 per cent.

Though this was the majority view in every nation surveyed, one of the few to buck the trend somewhat, at 57 per cent, is Denmark. Here centrist and centre-Left parties embraced draconian restrictions that would be unthinkable in Britain; from special laws limiting the share of non-Western people in “ghettos”, to declaring Syria a “safe country” to enable refugee deportations. Such policies are supported across the political spectrum, which may explain migration’s lower salience in public debate. A Danish solution may not be identical to ours. But a reminder that immigration controls are not just the preserve of the “far-Right” should be a salutary lesson to our politicians.

Any Conservative recovery will need to recognise the truth about migration if the party is ever to be trusted again.