UK Election; Analysis

Fortune Fox Studio

History of UK elections - 1801: The right to vote in the United Kingdom was restricted. - 1832: The Reform Act disenfranchised the rotten boroughs. - 1859: The Liberal Party was formed. - 1918: The last general election in the UK was held on an individual day. - 1922: The first election was held in the new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. - 1928: Universal suffrage was established for men and women over 21 years old. - 1974: The last time two general elections were held in one year. - 2001-2019: UK Election statistics for the last century were compiled. - 2010-2019: A century of elections were chronicled. - 2019: The last general election was held on December 12. - 2024: The general election will be held on Thursday, July 4, and the new Parliament will meet on Tuesday, July   Courtesy: Sky News / YouTube

Transcript

00:00Yeah thanks, well I mean throughout this campaign we're going to be going through

00:04a lot of the the big issues that are coming up here, some of the claims that

00:08we're hearing about from the parties and also just giving you a sense of the

00:12state of the economy, the state of the country right now and as you mentioned

00:16immigration it is one of the big issues in this election. We're going to be

00:19hearing a lot about it, we've heard a lot about it from all of these people from

00:22these party leaders and we'll hear more about it I imagine. But there are also

00:26lots of misconceptions about migration so before we get to the particular kind

00:29of claims and policies that we are hearing about today, let's just go

00:33through some of these misconceptions. There's three of them really that you

00:36might hear about a lot and you're wondering what are they actually true

00:39and a lot of people saying this is all about small boats so the migration

00:43story is mostly about small boats. It's not quite right okay, it's not just small

00:46boats. Let me just show you the numbers on this okay, small boats this is just

00:50back last year we're looking at the full year numbers for 2023, small boats

00:53you're talking just under 30,000 people coming in on small boats, very high in

00:59historical number kind of proportion but nonetheless compare that to the

01:03overall numbers for asylum seekers and that is significantly higher 81,000. Now

01:08compare that to for instance people coming in to study and look at this bar

01:12okay that's up by 379,000 so just look at the difference between them and then

01:18look at the number of people coming in to work in that year 423,000 and then

01:23you've got other reasons as well add it all up and you're talking about over a

01:26million people coming in. Small boats really only a small fraction of that of

01:29course very visible lots of talk about it but in the big picture here is about

01:34something else entirely. Also another misconception some people say well isn't

01:38this mostly about numbers of people coming in from Ukraine and Hong Kong

01:41well definitely that has been a factor okay but let me just compare overall

01:45reasons this is people coming in from all over the world outside of Hong Kong

01:49outside of Ukraine big numbers there now add on Ukraine and Hong Kong and because

01:55while it is pretty sizable it is small in comparison with this other big mass

01:59of migration that's immigration that we've seen into the UK. Final thing final

02:03misconception more broadly some people have been looking at these numbers and

02:07saying listen there's nothing abnormal happening at the moment you know

02:10migration numbers they're basically in line with where they have been for some

02:13time well that is absolutely not wrong either this is showing you total net

02:18migration so the number of people coming in minus number of people going out

02:21going back as a percentage of the population so it's comparable going back

02:25to 1855 okay so this is a very very long range thing anything anyone going out is

02:30above the line anyone coming in rather going in above the line and when more

02:34people are leaving that's below the line look at the line here in the last few

02:38years just look at what's happened to net migration we have never seen it as

02:43high as it is right now that is a historic high going back more than 150

02:48years so that is very striking indeed and it's worth just keeping all of that

02:51in mind when we go on some of these pledges when it comes to the pledges

02:54okay so the latest one we've had is from Rishi Sunak and he says the plan on

03:00immigration is working but migration levels are still too high so we're going

03:04further we have a clear plan to stop the boats and put a legal cap on numbers now

03:09as I was saying the boats is you know relatively small in terms of the grand

03:13scheme of things this legal cap is interesting the problem is what we

03:16haven't heard from Rishi Sunak is what is that cap actually going to be so we

03:20don't know what it's going to be they say that it's going to be decided each

03:23Parliament but it's worth just going back and looking back at the history of

03:26caps because we have had caps on net migration most notoriously David Cameron

03:31said that he wanted to keep net migration into the tens of thousands and

03:34so that was a cap that existed in that period Theresa May kept it as well look

03:38at the line look at the dotted line did that work well let's bring on the

03:42numbers no it didn't so at no point in that period did that cap on migration

03:47actually was it met now Boris Johnson then came in he actually kind of got

03:51rid of the cap but he had a you know he wanted a constraint he had a point space

03:55system ironically that was actually the one period where the numbers did go down

03:58below where that cap was largely because of COVID then you had Brexit coming in

04:03post Brexit rules came into force and just look at what happened to net

04:06migration after those Brexit rules came into force so post Brexit a lot of

04:11people thought Brexit was all about trying to get migration down in fact the

04:15opposite actually happens and final thing to say it's not just Rishi Sunak

04:19we've heard from on this it's also this man Nigel Farage he says I said this

04:24just today that net migration shouldn't be capped it should be zero and that

04:29raises another question when was the last time that net migration was zero

04:33and if we look back at this chart same thing net migration that's people kind

04:38of more when the number of people coming in outnumbers those who are going out

04:41the red bars are showing you when there's more people leaving the country

04:43and you can see yes there were moments where there was basically zero net

04:47migration look at this one okay so that's 1992 to 1993 that was when the UK

04:53was in recession okay there was a period here 1998 when there was freedom of

04:58movement suddenly there was an immigration act the UK it meant that

05:01people from the UK could go out and work in the EU then you've got negative net

05:04migration and then there's this large period actually for most of the

05:08post-war period the UK had negative net migration more people leaving than

05:14coming in but at the time people weren't thinking that was a good news story they

05:18thought it was a bad news stories because people didn't want to come to

05:20the UK they wanted to leave they wanted to find work elsewhere and people were

05:23fretting about the brain drain so it's certainly true that it has happened in

05:28the past it's certainly true these numbers here are unprecedented and I

05:31showed that chart earlier going back to 1855 and it's certainly true that you

05:35could get kind of either zero or negative net migration but it's

05:39definitely more of an economic story about how the economy is doing rather

05:43than any caps that have been in place over that period. Ed it's absolutely

05:47fascinating analysis as always I mean if we my main question is if we were to go

05:52back to that first chart which broke down where the numbers came from over a

05:56million for 2023 and what the breakdown was the biggest bar I think was people

06:02coming in to work and if you were to remove that what would be the result

06:07presumably at least a chunk of that would be jobs not filled as opposed to

06:14jobs filled by domestic workers I mean talk to us about the demographic

06:19position and whether we need people to come in to fill those jobs or else the

06:22alternative is almost a like-for-like trade-off of unemployment rising? Well I

06:27think that's I mean that's a really good point and some people would say actually

06:30you shouldn't really include the study numbers so this is students coming into

06:32the UK and their dependents okay so there's a question mark as you know

06:35about kind of a third of that is dependents and kind of slightly more

06:39than that is dependents so you know wives, partners, children is a part of

06:44those bars. Some people say you shouldn't really include that because that's

06:47people that are coming in for a few years but as you point out this is the

06:51big one okay and this is comes back to that broader point about that last

06:54chart I was showing you. You know it's nice to think that you could just put a

06:58cap and actually it would actually work. In practice what is

07:03migration? It's usually a function of what's going on in the economy. If your

07:06economy is doing well and people actually want to come and work there and

07:08you have a shortage of workers here which we certainly do right now shortage

07:11of people in the workforce then you just get migration that's just the way that

07:16this tends to work and if you weren't to have that then we would have

07:20real trouble filling lots of jobs filling lots of positions in the UK. We

07:24have a shortage post COVID of positions of workers for those positions that are

07:29needed particularly in the NHS and actually a large chunk one of the

07:32largest chunks of that is people coming in to work in health whether it's nurses

07:36in social care and so on. So these numbers are in no way trivial they are

07:40enormous as I'm saying but they are a function really of where the economy is

07:44right now what's happening post COVID and really of those kind of the hierarchy

07:49of things that actually influence this. Caps is way down on this the history of

07:54caps basically says they don't really work. What if it was more means-tested

08:00and you kind of made it stricter which I guess James Cleverley shortly after

08:04becoming Home Secretary did a little bit and maybe we haven't got the the results

08:08of that and imposed tougher restrictions on what it has to be to have a worker

08:14coming from abroad versus at home I mean presumably that would just fuel wage

08:18inflation to some extent and trying to shake away inflation. That's

08:22definitely the idea so you can bring in more stringent caps on various

08:26different policies and I think the government would say look when you look

08:29at the shape of this it is starting to flatten off and that might well be

08:33as a result of some of our policies although to be honest with you these

08:37numbers get revised a lot. Sometimes they look like they're kind of

08:39going down a bit and then in revision comes in and actually that's going up so

08:43for the time being it doesn't look like any of those policies have had much of a

08:47difference but as I say we have never seen anything like this. It followed

08:51Brexit, it followed a big change in the immigration system but at the same time

08:55you had Covid, at the same time you had the the aftermath of that, at the same

08:59time you've had these flows of immigrants from from Ukraine and Hong Kong

09:03so there is a lot going on but it's it's entirely reasonable that we have this

09:07conversation because as I say we have never seen these numbers looking as high

09:11as they are at the moment and that is a legitimate part of that of the election

09:15debate.

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