Many people on here are attacking either Starmer or Farage over their immigration policies, but what I don't see anywhere are alternative ideas to deal with the issue. People think immigration is (almost) the most important issue facing the country, and a majority believe immigration is too high.
Step 1, blanket amnesty & benefits backpay for all existing asylum seekers. Step 2, media blitz pointing out that the "crisis" is entirely manufactured & the "small boats crisis" is caused by refusing to staff application processing jobs forcing families to live in squalid camps for months or years
Step 3, point out that since Boris killed 200k people with> Covid and Brexit decimated our NHS staffing levels we need more migrants, not less. Step 4, Point out that since most of the refugees come from countries we bombed for no reason AND we have a legal obligation they should shut the fuck up
Weird how nobody complains about foreign and non-dom millionaire and billionaire tax dodgers buying up houses and hotels, just poor people living in them. Weird how those same billionaires own all the newspapers and media channels and politicians.
How would you solve the issues of people arriving in small boats, and thousands of asylum seekers accommodated in hotels?
It doesn't feel like the status quo is an option if we are to avoid a Reform government with Nigel Farage as PM.
Is the issue the level of immigration or media/social media campaigns (both controlled by rightwing billionaires) that have seen reported concern rising even as the actual level of immigration has crashed?
I don't disagree that the media (both social/mainstream - I would add BBC too) has played a key role in driving the salience of the issue, but that doesn't change the situation that the public believe this is a problem that needs to be sorted (even though the data suggests it is already falling).
I would let them work - the policy we used to have before performative cruelty to foreigners. The reason there are thousands of refugees in hotels is because the Reform Dead government allowed a backlog of claims to build up, a policy that Reform Lite has done nothing to address.
By engaging with "Well what would you do with these subhumans then?" questions, you are validating their premise of a crisis. Britain does not have an immigration or a refugee crisis beyond one created by British governments appeasing the worst people in Britain.
The problem is that voters believe there is a crisis, and telling them: "no, actually you're wrong about this" is a really bad political communication strategy.
No its not. Politicians shape public opinion.
The public believe all kinds of batshit crazy. They believe the government engaged in weather control experiments and that's why we had cloudy skies in August for years. Accepting the premise of "legitimate concerns" of riled up flag shaggers gets you to a bad place quickly, nothing else.
Almost 70% of the UK public believe that immigration is too high, and I don't believe the vast majority of those can be characterised as "flag shaggers". And nor do I believe a vast majority believe those conspiracy theories you highlight.