Very succinct WSJ summary of the staggering migration shock that successive Tory governments inflicted on Britain as they tried to mitigate and hide the economic consequences of the Brexit disaster
Replies
I don’t know how many EU citizens left UK after Brexit, but it’s a substantial number. We (EUinUK) predicted this would happen. This kind of vindication does not feel like a triumph though.
aug 29, 2025, 8:43 am • 3 0 • view
Why doesn't the Labour Party simply point out this fact and say it was a good thing?
aug 28, 2025, 4:07 pm • 1 0 • view
Which does beg the question as to why Starmer won't confront the chief architect of the chaos with this. Hang the failure of Brexit & the lack of coherent plan to implement it around Farage's neck & point out that the charlatan is doing the same thing again. He needs to be braver!
aug 28, 2025, 3:34 pm • 13 1 • view
Starmer was the architect of the second referendum option & got badly burned. Brexit in one sense achieved the goal of its voters: reduced EU immigration. Events since prove it was always the politicians that refused to control it. It would be political death for Starmer to fall in to this camp.
aug 28, 2025, 5:33 pm • 2 0 • view
I'd counter that his current reticence & silence at Farage's wild pronouncements over deportation (unchallenged by virtually everyone in the media) has already put him in danger of political death. He appears to be a little too focused on world, rather than domestic, affairs
aug 29, 2025, 8:01 am • 2 0 • view
Tbh, like most PMs, I suspect he finds world affairs simply much easier to deal with than the most intractable parts of domestic politics.
aug 29, 2025, 4:58 pm • 1 0 • view
To what extent are these figures separate from people who came under the settle status schemes? Those had greater than expected numbers
aug 28, 2025, 5:41 pm • 0 0 • view
They didn't arrive between 2021-2024 though, most people eligible for the EUSS arrived before 31 December 2020.
aug 28, 2025, 8:18 pm • 2 0 • view
True but the EUSS may be the first time they were counted
aug 28, 2025, 8:44 pm • 0 0 • view
Here in EU under FOM people are counted through registration with IDs so councils & govts can be informed & plan ahead for services. Maybe this is the real control that the British lack? (Failure to register=no healthcare, education, accommodation, services etc.)
aug 30, 2025, 7:52 am • 0 0 • view
And the really unacceptable thing about that is not the immigration policy itself (although it is a very extreme one, as you say) but that they simultaneously said that immigration was bad and they were cracking down on it. Together this has created an insanely disoriented public mood on this.
aug 28, 2025, 3:17 pm • 7 1 • view
(The fact that the British government could run this policy with that rhetoric suggests things about the corruption and stupidity of the UK discourse that I don't want to think about).
aug 28, 2025, 3:17 pm • 7 0 • view
The tories did not loose control. Increased migration was a plan to hide the costs of Brexit and to offset EU nationals leaving. Planned higher immigration meant GDP growth did not go to zero or below zero.
aug 28, 2025, 2:28 pm • 7 0 • view
Quite. That was my point, and one which comes across clearly from the WSJ’s excellent reporting
aug 28, 2025, 2:33 pm • 5 0 • view
Sorry, I read the article snapshot and not all of your post. Increased immigration is probably the reason my Tesco shares have doubled in value, but my shares in engineering/ tech companies trading across Europe have struggled.
aug 28, 2025, 2:38 pm • 1 0 • view
Dassault Systèmes share price also doubled over 9 years. You could have invested in ASML Holdings NV or Vestas Wind Systems AS.
aug 29, 2025, 8:35 am • 0 0 • view
📌
aug 28, 2025, 5:15 pm • 0 0 • view
OK ….UK gov built an economy based on services and consumer capitalism . Cheap food , hospitality, cheap imported goods , distribution centres , all of which needed an increased labour force , cheap cash . Actively recruit overseas labour to grow economy . Pre Brexit .
aug 28, 2025, 3:12 pm • 1 0 • view
This is the disaster at the heart of GB's economic failure: gdp growth by population boosting while wages and gdp per capita stagnate (a pre-Bexit phenomenon). Reversing it first and foremost requires ending the source of cheap labour, which voters have figured out.
aug 28, 2025, 5:36 pm • 0 0 • view
📌
aug 28, 2025, 4:31 pm • 0 0 • view
what do you mean "inflicted on Britain"? Are you against immigrants and if so why?
aug 28, 2025, 3:26 pm • 1 0 • view
Not read this piece yet, but it's the second time someone's posted that "1 in every 25" number and I don't see how that can be right? 4.5m times either 25 or 24 (whichever way you're meant to do it) makes 108-112.5m people? That's about 40m too many I think
aug 28, 2025, 2:35 pm • 0 0 • view
Presumably half the 4.5m have left already (as you would expect since the numbers measure arrivals, regardless of how long they plan to stay). Otherwise it would be 1 in 15 people which would surely be far too high…
aug 28, 2025, 2:40 pm • 1 0 • view
Ah right - yes if I do it the other way around then 1/25 of ~71m is about 2.8m... Still not sure what that means. I'll have to read the piece
aug 28, 2025, 2:45 pm • 0 0 • view
And do please come back and explain it to the arithmetically-challenged (me)
aug 28, 2025, 3:35 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s simply saying that of the 4.5 million who arrived during the last four years of the Tories, more than half are still here. As a result, one in 25 people in the country today arrived during those years…
aug 28, 2025, 4:08 pm • 1 0 • view
That's how I first read it, then confused myself. Thanks for clarifying. That's an impressive statistic.
aug 28, 2025, 4:20 pm • 0 0 • view
The Tory refusal to be honest about the scale of their Brexit disaster and associated trade-offs has utterly discredited the party, perhaps permanently, radicalised the right and raised the spectre of a Faragist Trumpian tyranny. The country risks being trapped in a doom loop.
aug 28, 2025, 2:44 pm • 47 11 • view
We have to learn from the experience of Johnson as PM. Initially they appear charismatic but fragile egos need to strut, need self aggrandisement, need revenge, they are grandiose, have no emotional intelligence or empathy, no interest in needs of electorate. Narcissists are toxic in public office.
aug 28, 2025, 4:36 pm • 0 0 • view
But it was FARAGE's Brexit disaster too - and now those deluded Brexit voters see him as the firebrigade rather than the bloody Arsonist he is!!!
aug 28, 2025, 3:18 pm • 16 1 • view
...and we have to listen to and read the same dishonesty as they prepare the country for more of the same shite. This time, with King Charlatan front and centre and The Labour Party hiding behind him.
aug 28, 2025, 3:17 pm • 1 0 • view
All to stop people "banging on about Europe" in the Tory Party.
aug 28, 2025, 4:39 pm • 0 0 • view