It’s probably worth starting this post off with a caveat.
Yes, I am writing this as a migrant. One who got to the UK about ten years ago. In that time, I’ve paid my (very expensive) dues, I got my ILR and, very shortly after, naturalised as a British citizen.
In short, I’m one of those people who live in London who are “foreign born”, along with a few million others. I also happen to write about politics, which means that every time I open my mouth about migration, there’s a predictable response that always pops up, “of course you’d say that, you’re a Migrant, you’re biased”
And you could well be right, maybe I am. At the same time, I think it makes me more experienced on the actual meaning of migrant, and, dare I say it, just a bit more blunt.
The politics of high migration
Migration numbers are high, and too high at that. They’re certainly far higher than various blue or red ministers have promised time and again, higher than most people expected, and higher than is sustainable without serious planning. Pretending otherwise doesn’t do any of us any real favours.
The problem is that instead of having a grown-up conversation about the situation, we have a subtle message that helps us to keep pretending that this country could somehow manage without migration at all.
That Britain is – or ever even was – a self-contained island, running terribly neatly on its own steam, all vim, vigour and pluckiness. This is the bit of the conversation that always makes me raise my left eyebrow, because if you take an even cursory glance at British history, you’ll notice something fairly obvious:
Britain as a country has almost never been self-sufficient.
How migration feeds the nation
One of the best examples is food. The last time Britain was likely self-sufficient in feeding itself was in the 19th century, and since then, it has relied on imports to keep supermarket shelves full and stomachs lined. Even during the Second World War – vividly recounted as the time of patriotic self-reliance – the government had to plead with farmers to boost production and simultaneously lean on imports from across the Empire. “Dig on for Victory” posters were as much morale-building as they were actual policy.
Energy? The coal that fuelled the Industrial Revolution was never going to be enough on its own, and by the 20th century Britain was importing oil to keep the lights on.
Manufacturing? It was never just “Made in Britain” – it was “Assembled in Britain from resources taken elsewhere”. Cotton, sugar, rubber, resources – none of which came from anywhere on these islands itself. The very idea of British industrial might, rested on the fact that much of the raw material was anything but British.
And, of course, people.
This is the bit we’re not supposed to say out loud, but it’s true: Britain has always needed other people. From the Irish labourers who helped build the railways in the 19th century, to the Caribbean nurses who helped build the NHS in the 20th, to the social care workers flown in today from Ghana, India and the Philippines. This is not a new development – the faces might change, the accents may shift, but the dependence remains.
Exploiting labour across the empire
And it wasn’t just the people who came to our green and pleasant island, because for centuries, Britain leaned on the labour of people it colonised abroad – without ever recognising that this is what was happening. Enslaved Africans cutting sugar in the Caribbean plantations, Indian weavers producing textiles that underpinned British wealth, farmers in Kenya cultivating tea for export. Millions of lives and livelihoods were bent to serve the needs of an island that could never sustain itself on its own. Britain’s “workforce” was global long before anyone called it that.
The fact of the matter is that Britain’s wealth, power and global position were built on South African and Indian gold and diamonds, sugar from the Caribbean, cotton from the American South, rubber from Malaya and resources extracted from every single corner of the globe. The infrastructure, the institutions, the capital that made Britain “Great” – none of it was self-generated. It was taken, often by force, always by design.
And if that sounds “anti-Empire” to you – good. I am anti-Empire. Be under no illusions on that front. But you don’t have to approve of how Britain got its resources to acknowledge the basic historical fact: this country’s entire foundation rests on what other people provided, whether willingly or not.
All of the above is why I find the current outrage cycle about “unsustainable migration” so incredibly a-historical. It’s not that people are wrong to feel the pressure of rapid change in communities, or to worry about housing, jobs, and schools; I acknowledge those concerns are real. The issues it that the idea that high migration is some freak modern accident, a sudden departure from centuries of sturdy independence – that’s the delusion that vast swathes of our population seem to be labouring under.
Which brings us to the here and now.
Britain’s enduring need for migration
If (and I know it’s a big if for some) we can accept that Britain has a long, well-documented history of relying on outside resources, it shouldn’t really surprise us that we as a country still do. What is surprising is how little honesty there is about why migration numbers are currently so high.
And no, before anyone thinks to go there, the reason for high migration isn’t a conspiracy cooked up in Brussels, or a deliberate scheme to “replace” the population, or whatever today’s fever dream happens to be. It’s far, far more mundane. Much more British, in fact. It’s the direct consequence of underinvestment and short-termism.
If you’ve had a relative in a care home recently, you’ll know that much of the workforce isn’t British born. And the reason is simple: nobody in this country wants to do the job for caring for our elderly and infirm for the remuneration that’s on offer. Years of political neglect mean social care jobs are chronically underfunded, woefully under-respected and incredibly unappealing. So what happens? Vacancies mount up, and the government issues visas to fill them. We talk a lot about choice in this country, but when it comes to who changes the bedpans, the choice has already been made – import the labour, don’t fix the pay.
The NHS runs on migration
The NHS is example B. It is the single biggest employer of migrants in the UK. Around 16% of staff in England are non-British nationals, and in some hospitals the proportion is much higher. That’s not an accident – it’s policy. Successive governments have known for decades that training enough doctors and nurses at home would be expensive, slow and electorally dull. Recruiting from abroad, on the other hand, is quick, cheap, and invisible to voters until they’re in A&E and notice the accents.
The state of our universities tells yet another story of dependency. For years now, British universities have had their budgets hollowed out by frozen domestic tuition fees, with the only thing keeping many of them afloat is the much higher fees that can be gained from international students. That’s a big reason for why the visa figures look the way they do. Not because there’s been a secret open-border plot (there’s not), but because without these international students and their inflated fees, universities would go bankrupt.
Our tech and finance sectors, those supposedly gleaming symbols of British competitiveness, rely heavily on imported skills. We simply have not invested enough in training and education to meet demand, so when companies lobby for visas, the government obliges, and then the same politicians pretend to be oh so very shocked when the numbers predictably spike.
The great migration hypocrisy
This is what makes the whole “migration crisis” debate so incredibly frustrating to me. Politicians talk about migrants as if they were somehow forcing their way in, when in reality nearly all of them are here because Britain invited them. Issued the visas. Designed the schemes. Opened the gates, not out of generosity, but out of, say it with me, necessity.
We could, of course, choose to do things differently. We could raise wages in social care, expand medical and nursing training, properly give universities the funding they need, and build serious pathways for British workers to take up these roles. But, unfortunately, doing something like that would cost money, political capital and patience, which are three things Westminster is almost always short of.
So instead, we point the finger. We tell voters that migration is “too high”, but we leave out the incredibly important ‘why’ of the matter, and in the gap between perception and reality, resentment festers.
And that’s the most insane part of all this. For a country that has spent centuries leaning on the labour, land and resources of other countries, we’ve developed an incredible capacity for selective amnesia. The story we tell ourselves is one of pluck and self-reliance, while the reality is dependency in different forms at different times.
Empire.
Commonwealth.
Global Britain.
Now, “points-based system”.
The truth we refuse to face
But if you look past the shiny branding, the reality remains starkly and stubbornly the same: Britain simply cannot function without outsiders.
And if we can finally admit to ourselves that Britain has always been dependent on others, then maybe the question isn’t: ‘how to stop that dependence altogether’; maybe it can become: ‘how to make it fairer, more honest and less hypocritical’.
What I’m desperate for – what this whole conversation needs very urgently – is just one politician to be bloody honest about it. I wish Keir Starmer would get behind a podium and say the words:
“We have listened to your concerns that migration is too high, and we are willing to act on it. At the same time, we, as a nation, must also acknowledge that we are a country dependent on other countries. We are dependent on the labour, skills and resources of others – we always have been, and we always will be. The question isn’t whether we can end that dependency, but whether we can make it work better for everyone involved. That means investing in training, improving wages in essential sectors and being honest about the choices we face rather than pretending we can have it both ways.”
Starmer’s cowardice
I just don’t see it happening, because it’s the kind of political honesty that would probably end his career. Even if it’s the thing that might actually start fixing the problem, because it acknowledges concerns without pandering, explains the reality without excuses, and offers a path forward that doesn’t rely on scapegoating.
And I can guarantee you it won’t come from Kemi Badenoch, who’d rather talk about “British values” than British failures of investment. It won’t come from Robert Jenrick, who’s far too keen on riding the anti-migration wave on social media that’s currently rolling over this country, and it certainly won’t come from Nigel Farage, whose entire political project is completely dependent on pretending Britain’s problems started the day the first migrant stepped onto British soil.
We remain reliant on politicians to help fix the messaging here. The question is whether we have any who have the courage to tell the truth, or whether they’ll all keep playing the same tired game of pointing fingers at migrants while quietly keeping the doors open because they know the country can’t function without them.
Because the real danger isn’t high migration, it’s high dishonesty. If we keep lying to ourselves about who we are and how we’ve always survived, then the resentment will only keep growing – and the country will keep eating itself from the inside out.
This article is republished with kind permission of The Bear. Read the original on his Substack here.
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