According
to YouGov, ‘Immigration and Asylum’ was the second
most important issue facing the country in May, just behind the
economy. According
to IPSOS immigration/immigrants was the most important
issue, rising well above the economy. Concern about immigration began
rising at about the same time as net immigration into the UK started
increasing dramatically, to nearly a million a year in 2023. Yet net
immigration fell as rapidly as it rose, and at the end of 2025 was at
levels typical of the period before the post-pandemic increase.
So why is public
concern about immigration still so high? The straightforward reason
is that most of the public don’t know that net immigration has
fallen dramatically. According to recent polling
conducted on behalf of British Future and the Policy
Institute at Kings College London, only 16% of people
think net immigration fell over the last year, while around half
thought it had increased.
It shouldn’t be
surprising that most people have little idea that net immigration has
been falling rapidly over the last two years. Most people don’t
follow data like this, and unlike issues like health or the cost of
living they often don’t have their own or friends/relations
experiences to fall back on. [1] When voters are asked
about important local issues, immigration falls
sharply down the list of issues that matter. They therefore rely to a
much greater extent on what they pick up from traditional or social
media.
Of course the nature
of the concern that some people have about the issue is very real. It
could be xenophobia, or just a dislike of change, or a perceived link
to other issues like employment, wages, housing or access to public
services. But whether immigration is intensifying those concerns does
depend on the numbers involved, so it does matter that voters think
immigration is increasing when in reality it is not.
What most voters do
notice is what issues are talked about on regular news bulletins. If
those news programmes involve politicians from Reform, then they will
invariably talk about immigration or asylum because that is their
issue. Because they want to sustain a concern about the issue, Reform
politicians will not be telling the public that numbers have come
right down. So voters imagine immigration numbers are still high and
rising, because politicians are still talking as if they are.
We can blame
government politicians for not emphasising the recent data enough
(see below). But voter’s understanding of basic social or economic
facts should not have to rely on the communication skills of
politicians. It should be the media’s job to keep people informed.
For the BBC, informing the public is part
of their mission. In the case of immigration numbers
it appears as if the media is failing to achieve this mission. As
Chris Dillow reminds us, immigration numbers is not
the only politically sensitive area where the public is seriously
misinformed, and typically the misinformation favours the political
right.
A major reason for
this is that in some parts of the media, those parts where news
is selected to become propaganda, this failure is
entirely intentional. The right wing press, GB news and large parts
of social media will describe high immigration numbers in terms of
‘floods’ and ‘invasions’, but will give far less publicity to
falling immigration numbers. In this sense they act just like the
right wing populist politicians they support.
However, for the
broadcast media that likes to think of itself as impartial, this
disconnect between reality and what voters perceive, for an issue
which is politically crucial, should be keeping those who work in it
awake at night. It doesn’t, of course. (If I’m wrong about this,
let me know!) We often take it for granted that journalists should
above all else want to get the facts across, particularly when those
facts are not well understood or are simply not recognised, but
increasingly In the UK, as in the US, there is little incentive for
them to do so.
The obvious response
from those in the media is that they do give immigration numbers
publicity when this data comes out, and what else can they do? The
answer is a lot. When journalists interact with politicians on a day
to day basis, particularly those who benefit from popular
misunderstandings, they can make a particular point of mentioning the
data, like the latest immigration numbers. A regular question for
right wing populist politicians is why they are not welcoming the
fact that immigration numbers have come right down. The same can be
done in the commentary that senior political journalists in the
broadcast media regularly give in interpreting political news.
As I suggested
earlier, the media doesn’t do this because they don’t have
sufficient incentives to do so. The media worries about what
politicians think, and as a result is obsessed by balance, but most
politicians are more interested in favourable coverage than the
facts. In the UK the propaganda news media has an outsize influence
on the broadcast media. Finally the UK regulator, Ofcom, is hopeless.
Public
misunderstanding of facts in highly sensitive political areas will
only be corrected when the media has an incentive to do what it can
to correct them. That incentive has to come from politicians and the
media regulator, because it is not going t…
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