It was entirely
predictable that immigration/asylum would become the issue voters
thought was the most important facing the country. Many people relate
concern about immigration or asylum seekers directly to numbers, but
that is only half true. Information about numbers is
mediated through the
media, and in particular through the right wing press (which is most
of the print media in the UK) [1]. Most of those expressing concern
about immigration have no direct experience of the extent of
immigration, and will certainly not be looking up the numbers
themselves. As is well known, concern about immigration tends to be
highest in areas where immigration is very low, and high national
concern can
coincide with people saying that immigration is not a
big issue for their own area (see also here).
I first discussed
this in a
post in 2017, where I noted that the big increase in
concern about immigration at the start of this century lagged
increases in immigration numbers by a few years, but the lag between
concern and the number of stories about immigration in the press was
much shorter. Of course it greatly helps the right wing press to
write those stories if they can refer to ‘record numbers’ and
talk about ‘invasions’, so numbers clearly matter. But the right
wing press is an important filter, as developments over the last
decade clearly show.
The most obvious
example is in the year before the Brexit referendum. Net migration to
the UK was
at a similar level to the previous five years, but
public concern about immigration peaked in the year before the
referendum because the right wing press was determined for Leave to
win the referendum and knew negative stories about immigration and
immigrants were a good way to achieve this. Once this goal had been
achieved, there was less of a political need to write these stories
and public concern steadily declined, even though net migration
remained high right up until the pandemic. [2] As Roy
Greenslade noted in January 2020,
“immigration has all but disappeared from newspaper pages.
References to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees have almost
vanished along with the associated prejudicial buzzwords and phrases,
such as swamping, influx, surge, illegal, bogus, sham, jungle,
welfare scroungers, benefit tourists.”
Net migration again
hit record levels in 2021, but it wasn’t until 2024 that public
concern about immigration came close to previous peaks. With a
Conservative government in power and a general election forthcoming,
right wing newspapers had their reasons for holding back. Concern
might have been lower still if Sunak had not made the foolish
decision to prioritise ‘stopping the boats’ through a crackpot
scheme. But once we had a Labour government, there was no reason for
the press to hold back.
If you think this
exploration of the link between press coverage and public attitudes
is not terribly rigorous, then there are academic studies that link
public concern about immigration in many countries to media coverage
(e.g. here
and here).
We also have studies that link how the media, and right wing press in
particular, talk about immigration and asylum to public attitudes
towards this issue (e.g. here
and here).
Images matter as well as words, and the right wing press choose
their images as any good
propagandist would.
Of course the
massive increase in net immigration in 2022/3 was bound to increase
public concern among those who worry about immigration levels. But
numbers have been falling equally fast in 2024, yet public concern
has continued to rise. This is partly because
much of the public think ‘illegal’ migration
exceeds legal migration, when in 2024 the former was just 5% of the
latter. So the press and politicians can switch between the two
issues depending on which can be made to sound more alarmist, and
because few in or on the media counter this misinformation the
public are inevitably misled.
The recent coverage
of immigration and asylum in the right wing press has
been almost apocalyptic.
They have been hyping small demonstrations as if they were indicators
of impending national unrest, and the broadcast
media has largely followed their lead. The recent
celebration by the Mail, Sun and Telegraph of someone who pleaded
guilty to inciting racial hatred [3] makes “Hurrah
for the Blackshirts” sound rather tame. We have
reached the point where a majority of the print media are in effect
encouraging civil unrest and racial hatred, yet thanks to political
short termism this press remains essentially
unaccountable for their behaviour.
This suggests two
key conclusions. The first is that we currently don’t have much of
a debate around immigration and asylum in the UK, as long as the
Labour government continues to believe that parroting Farage and the
Conservatives is the clever thing to do. For a debate you need two
sides, and beyond the pages of the Guardian, FT and
Mirror, where is the side to oppose Farage et al? [4]
This is an example
of something I
wrote about earlier. Social liberals, despite making
up at least half the UK population, have little voice in politics and
the media nowadays. They are the new silent majority. This alone is a
good reason for a new party of the left, and a more active Green
leadership, but neither will make much of an impact on a broadcast
media that is used to balancing the government with the opposition,
and which largely ignores other political parties unless they are ledby Farage. It will of course make no impact on the right wing press.
The second
conclusion is that, on this issue as well as others like net zero,
the right wing press may no longer be the “Tory party in the media”
(to
quote Tim Bale), but is instead Reform in the media.
In perhaps the more important sense this has been true for some time,
with in particular its support for Brexit. But as long as the
Conservatives were the government or main opposition, it made sense
for the right wing press to use Reform (and earlier UKIP) to help
push its own agenda within the Conservative party, rather than
pushing Reform as an alternative to the Tories. With Reform way ahead
of the Conservatives in the polls, and with their policies on many
(but
not all) issues being identical, this is no longer the
case.
In terms of its day
to day coverage on key issues like immigration, asylum, climate
change and Brexit, the right wing media is now acting as a propaganda
outlet for Reform at least as much as the Conservatives. But, as
previously with the Conservatives, it is often not clear whether the
press are following the politicians lead, or whether the politicians
are being led by the press. It may be at least as true to say that
Farage and Jenrick are part of the political arm of the UK right wing
press.
[1] Sales of
newspapers may be falling, but their online influence remains large,
and more than ever the right wing press sets
the agenda for the BBC and others.
[2] Stories about
how specific labour shortages, like lorry drivers, were causing
economic damage also probably helped.
[3] She
said “set fire to all the fucking [asylum] hotels
full of the bastards”
[4] Zoe
Gardner is great, of course, but I’m sure she would
like some support from at least one of the three parties currently
leading in the polls.
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