The British people are turning against immigration.

New data reveals just how badly the establishment has misread the country

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For more than a decade, the political and media establishment in Britain has told itself a comforting story.

The shock vote for Brexit, more than a decade ago, was just the ‘last gasp’ of an older, more conservative Britain that struggles to accept the modern world.

Yes, some 17 million people might have voted to leave the European Union and given the establishment a bloody nose. But this was only a temporary revolt - a brief interruption on Britain’s inevitable journey towards a far more liberal future.

And in the years since — they continually tell us — new generations of younger, more diverse, and ‘better educated’ British people have arisen to continue pushing Britain towards this far more socially liberal, cosmopolitan, or ‘progressive’ horizon.

Ever more supportive of immigration. Ever more supportive of demographic change and rising diversity. Ever more relaxed about ‘modern Britain’. And ever more embarrassed about the vote for Brexit and the desire to ‘take back control’.

This is the narrative that countless politicians, academics, and columnists push.

Alastair Campbell. Rory Stewart. Emily Maitlis. Polly Toynbee. Owen Jones. Former Times columnist David Aaronovitch. Liberal pollster Peter Kellner. Academic activists like Jon Portes and Rob Ford. They have all made variations of this argument.

You know the type.

Smug illiberal progressives who think the future belongs to them, who preach about the wonders of diversity but refuse to tolerate genuine diversity of thought, who portray anybody who holds a different view as some kind of fascist, and who probably look at a newsletter like ours as representing a fringe minority.

Well, take a look at what is happening now.

A few days ago, a remarkable new study by the polling company YouGov completely dismantled this argument by comparing what the British people think today with what they thought at the time of the Brexit referendum, a decade ago.

And what did they find?

Contrary to all the talk and all the predictions about the British people embracing things like immigration and diversity, the pollsters found a very different story and one that reveals just how badly the establishment continues to misread Britain.

For a start, they found that over the last decade the British people have not become more supportive of immigration over the last decade. Far from it.

They are just as likely today as they were a decade ago to think immigration into Britain has been “too high” — a view which, consistently, seven in ten people hold.

While you won’t hear this on the BBC or one of the countless podcasts produced for the liberal minority, large majorities of British people think migration has been too high, with roughly half the country — 47% — saying it’s “much too high”.

There’s been no move leftwards. No ‘liberalisation’. The British people remain just as convinced that there’s too much migration as they were a decade ago.

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The fringe minority, in other words, is not people who want migration lowered; the fringe minority is the one in five people in Britain who think the level is “about right”.

Contrary to what all those columnists and academics tell us, furthermore, these views are also held widely among the young, too. Britain’s 18-24-year-olds are more likely to say immigration has been “too high” than say it’s been “too low” or “about right”. Again, this is not something that ever seems to feature in media vox-pops.

And that’s not even the most interesting part.

Because the pollsters also found something else that really does destroy the establishment narrative and which, I think, helps to explain why politics is so volatile at the moment.