October 4, 2024 October 3, 2024
Boris Johnson gives a speech in central London, while on the general election campaign. Photo: James Manning/PA Wire/dpa
On July 4, the British people demonstrated at the polls against Rishi Sunak’s conservative government. In the parliamentary elections held that day, lLabor doubled its seats. After 14 years of Conservative government, Keir Starmer achieved a historic majority. This election opened a space of hope for the possibility of transforming the disastrous measures that conservative governments have promoted in the last fifteen years on migration issues, through their main staging, Brexit.
Just a month later Starmer experienced his first crisis with the violent anti-immigration riots triggered by a wave of misinformation after the stabbing of several minors in Southport. lThe far-right spread false claims that the alleged attacker was an immigrant, mobilizing violent protests in several towns and cities in the United Kingdom. The newly elected Prime Minister, while trying to put an end to the riots, found himself involved in a discursive confrontation. Elon Musk, owner of platform For his part, Starmer spoke about the importance of addressing hate crimes that also occur online. A week later, thousands of people took to the streets in a demonstration of solidarity and against the riots. What happened during the month of August has opened a national conversation about how to address outbreaks of anti-immigration violence and has made it clear that migration is a key political issue on the communication and electoral agenda in different latitudes.
Migration was a point that contributed greatly to the success of Brexit in 2016. The Brexit vote was promoted by the conservative sectors of the United Kingdom as a choice between continuing to increase “the problem” of migration or definitively ending it. An example of this is that in the two months prior to the elections, media related to these sectors (such as the Daily Express or The Daily Telegraph) intensified a campaign of terror against migration, associating it with negative consequences such as insecurity or unemployment: references to migration on press covers during the two months before the referendum there were more than 100, while in the same period the previous year they did not reach 40 and the following year not even 10.
In this environment, the conservative Boris Johnson, who would become the conservative prime minister in charge of executing Brexit, told the press that what was wanted was “regain control over immigration and have more justice in the way it is done“. Along those same lines, the official website of the vote in favor of the Leave -leaving the EU-, threatened the massive arrival of new migrants if they remained in the European Union. According to the secretary of justice at the timeMichael Gove, there would have been more than 5 million by 2030.
A few years after the Brexit vote and with visible effects on immigration matters, it can be said that the consequences are not what conservative politicians predicted. Far from decreasing migrant flows, they have increased, with record net migration figures of more than 600,000 people in 2022 and 2023. The new point migration system and restrictions on European migrants has led to a shortage of workers in key sectors such as logistics and distribution, with the consequent slowdown in economic activity. The loss of collaboration with the EU has generated problems for the control, prevention and punishment of migrant trafficking and generated an unprecedented overflow of refugee protection systems.
According to a study conducted in 2023, 53% of Britons believed that the United Kingdom was wrong to leave the European Union. Eight years later, one in five pro-Brexit voters believe they made a mistake in their vote. It is clear that the United Kingdom needs a conversation about a decision that was made after a campaign built on anti-immigration narrative bases and that did not reflect on the possible consequences of separation in a rigorous way.
In the first meeting of the government team in Downing Street, the recently elected Prime Minister announced the end of a plan promoted by Sunak’s conservative government to redirect irregular migrants to Rwanda. This plan has been a central issue in the Labor campaign, which promised to change the course of the immigration policies promoted by the conservatives. Previous surveys already revealed a historic scenario for Starmer, revealing the general discontent and disagreement of the British with the direction that the conservatives had taken regarding migrations.
The choice of Brexit makes it possible to address precisely the trap hidden in the anti-immigration discourse. Experience teaches that sometimes the great solutions proposed by those who raise their voices against migrants and in favor of building walls generate costs that not only affect the lives of the people who migrate, but also of the societies that isolate themselves. in the ideas of “recovering the territory.” You only have to look at the cost of the loss of freedoms of British citizens who can no longer move and work freely in the European space, or the negative impacts on the British economy due to the loss of the migrant workforce.
