A Reality Check for the Left

What people REALLY think about immigration

Matt Goodwin’s Substack goes to more than 57,100 subscribers from 167 countries around the world and thousands of paying supporters who support our work. Like our stuff? Then help us expand by becoming a paid supporter and access everything —the full archive, Live with Matt every Friday, exclusive posts, polling, leave comments, join the debate, get discounts, notice about events, and the knowledge you’re supporting independent writers who are pushing back against the grain. Join us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and Facebook.

When it comes to immigration and what ordinary people really think about this issue, left liberals and radical progressives do whatever they can to deny reality.

You see this routinely in how they downplay, misinterpret, or simply ignore polling results which do not fit the liberal narrative.

And you saw it again, this week, in the general reaction to Suella Braverman’s speech on immigration, which caused a total meltdown in Westminster.

It was a speech in which the Home Secretary described uncontrolled and illegal migration as “an existential challenge” to the West, called for tougher restrictions, and suggested multiculturalism has failed.

As I wrote a few days ago, despite offering no viable alternative, liberal Tories, the liberal left, and radical progressives quickly united in branding Suella Braverman an extreme outlier who did not represent British values or the British people.

We were told she speaks for a fringe, far-right minority. We were told she speaks only for an older generation soon to be replaced. And we were told, over and over again, that she does not speak for the rest of the country.

But is this really true?

One thing I do on this platform —as you know— is bust the myths and misleading narratives which have taken hold of our woefully inadequate national ‘debate’.

A debate which is still largely wrapped around the values and voice of the country’s far more socially liberal and radically progressive ruling class.

And on immigration these myths and misleading narratives have proliferated.

Increasingly, as new polling underlines, the ruling class on both the Left and Right is simply drifting away from where many people in the country really are.

And the numbers are certainly not what you’d expect were you to only tune in to the likes of Radio 4, The Guardian, or the ramblings of centrist Tory MPs who described fellow Conservative Suella Braverman as using the “language of extremists”.

As I pointed out to left-winger Owen Jones on Twitter this week (tweet tweet) —who like many others on the left is falling over himself to avoid reality— the left (and many Tory MPs) simply need to get real on this issue.

Because if they don’t then it’s only a matter of time before Britain is going to witness another very big re

volt against an increasingly distant and out-of-touch elite.

So here are the very latest numbers. Do send them along to any friends and colleagues who you think might also want a reality check …

• 50% of British people think a sustainable asylum policy is not possible if being gay/women/fearing discrimination in their home country is sufficient to qualify

• 51% back the government’s Rwanda policy (see also this).

• 52% think we should remove illegal migrants from the country

• 52% want "tighter" migration restrictions

• 52% want immigration reduced

• 54% Brits say net migration of 500,000 plus is "too high"

• 57% Brits say illegal migration policy "too soft"

• 57% have "no confidence" government can fix small boats crisis

• 58% Brits say the UK has already lost control of borders

• 58% think illegal migrants have shown “contempt for British laws”

• 60% think we should prioritise UK workers over migrant workers

• 63% Brits think current immigration "too high"

And that’s not all. Here are a lot more numbers to keep in mind …

• 66% think, like Suella Braverman, uncontrolled & illegal immigration is an “existential challenge to the West”

• 69% think illegal migration has put “unsustainable pressure” on Britain and British taxpayers

• 70% think the government talks a good game on immigration now “needs to act”

• 84% think immigration has been handled "badly" by the government

• Just 14% think we should let EU judges impact decisions about UK borders

• And just 22% think immigration has been "mostly good" for UK

Alongside all this is also the fact …