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Alex Potts's avatar

To what extent is Farage's success predicated on a political class that has lied about reducing immigration?

As it is, the Tories' stance of promising to get numbers down, with some grim rhetoric along the way, has pissed off both sides of the aisle. And pretty much the entire political class has now been dragged into a position of saying "immigration numbers need to come down", seemingly without them coming down.

Wouldn't it be nice if someone actually put forward the positive case for immigration, rather than getting it in through the back door? Because I have to confess, even as someone who thinks immigration has way more pros than cons, if you're just a normal person who thinks migration ought to come down then you must be extremely frustrated by a House of Commons that apparently agrees with you but then fails to do anything about it. It feels like immigration decisions haven't been particularly democratic, so we shouldn't be surprised that opposition to those ideas also manifests in undemocratic ways like rioting.

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Vincent Raison's avatar

As a country, we have been obsessed with immigration for decades (and not just on the far right), despite its importance to, among other things, the NHS. New law after new law, all designed to stop people coming. Which is rich, given that we have invited ourselves into almost every country in the world at some point.

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