There is nothing progressive about a high level of immigration. The population of England increased by an average of just 100,000 people a year from 46 million to 49 million from 1971 to 2001. This is a sustainable level of population increase but 49 million was already greater than the number of people for which England can provide enough to eat from agriculture within the country.
Actually the 1971 population was 46.4 and with the population in 1991 being 47.9 so the average then was 75,000, with then 1991 to 2001 being 160,000 per year (i.e. there was already a growing population).
A lot of new towns were built after World War Two but these were needed to provide housing for the population increase of around five million people between the the end of World War Two and 1971. There is already a severe shortage of housing in England so the 1.5 million houses planned in the current five year Parliament are needed for the existing population. There is no chance of easing the housing shortage unless immigration is greatly reduced.
The reason there's a need for housing for the existing population is more to do with shrinking household sizes (mostly due to the aging population as for some reason older people statically have fewer babies than younger couples) than increasing population.
For every 2 homes needed due rising population size 3 homes are needed due to falling household sizes.
From 2001 to 2011 the population of England increased by four million to 53 million mostly due to immigration. This totally unsustainable rate of increase continued to 56.5 million in 2021 and was clearly the main reason for the around 53% vote in England to leave the European Union. However the previous Conservative Government failed to get this message from voters and in the last Parliament 2020 to 2024 added around another two million people through a level of immigration far higher than happened when this country was in the European Union.
I could see that could be an issue, although it's also worth noting that in the same timeframe those over 65 also increased by 0.9 million, so arguably a fair number of those were needed to pay for the extra pensioners (on a 3.6 to 1 ratio, the historic ratio, you'd need 3.25 million).
Ironically the population increase would have been much lower had the country stayed in the European Union and the Dublin Regulation and kept the 20,000 a year cap on work visas. The large number of people crossing the English Channel in small boats after 2020 is a result of the previous Conservative Government's decision to leave the Dublin Regulation.
The numbers of asylum applications vary year by year, however in the 1990's it varied from 22,000 to 71,000 with a mean of 37,400.
Whilst current levels are much higher (84,000), this is almost the same as in 2000 and 2002 and not much more that 2001.
A lot of the upset is down to the cost of housing them (about £50 per tax payer) and that because of the "interest" in the numbers that it's much more in the press than it was.
The vote in the 2025 local elections in England was unprecedented in that voters not only voted against the Labour Government but also the Conservative opposition. Clearly a large part of the reason for the success of the Reform Party in those elections was voters sending a message yet again that they want an end to people crossing the English Channel in small boats and a very big reduction in immigration because they can see that the housing shortage in particular will never be fixed without a very big reduction in immigration.
The Labour Government clearly does understand this and knows that to recover support from the voters they have lost to the Reform Party they have to stop people crossing the English Channel in small boats and greatly reduce net immigration. How successful the Labour Government will be in achieving this remains to be seen.
Some of the importance associated with asylum and immigration will be due to the fact more is being said about it.
I'm fairly liberal on immigration but even I have to admit that the last 2 years averaging 817,000 net migration per year is likely not sustainable.
Well, not without eye-watering sums of investment anyway.
There is also something to be said for handling rate of change. A few years back I was on the board of a charity with a private company subsid. We received a large increase in funding and decided to nearly double the size of the workforce. But after careful consideration we decided we would simply have to stagger it as the changes required to support services, and indeed the change in culture, would themselves present too great a challenge. This is not dissimilar to immigration policy in my view, where I have no issue with net migration being high, but if you do want to retain community relations and avoid significant culture clashes, as well as to actually build houses and train GPs and nurses and teachers and build schools etc, it has to be carefully controlled.
If net migration is 800k, that's maybe idk 400k homes which need building in addition to the homes which already need building the clear the 'backlog' so to speak. Talking a thousand homes per constituency per year, every year. For context, my council is building a site of 900 homes, largest in the county, and they're not due for a number of years.
See my comment above about the need for extra homes. However even on the lower rate of household size (2.36) it's closer to 340,00 homes and the per constituency number is 521.
Although as not all constituencies are equal, maybe a better figure would be on a small town with a population of 10,000 people (4,250 homes), that would need to house 120 people (51 homes), or an uplift of 1.2%.
1.2% is a fairly small growth rate. However as I've pointed out before you'd need to add to that 1.8% growth due to shrinking household sizes.
