A large majority of UK voters believe immigration is increasing despite sharp falls in the number of people entering the UK, according to exclusive polling shared with the Guardian.
Voters also say they have no confidence in the government’s ability to control the UK’s borders, according to the poll by More in Common. The results will come as a blow to Keir Starmer’s administration, which has taken an increasingly hardline stance on immigration in recent months.
Net migration to the UK fell by more than two-thirds to a post-pandemic low in the year ending June 2025, but 67% of the people polled thought it had increased. Among Reform voters, four in five thought immigration had grown, and more than three in five (63%) believed it had “increased significantly”.
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, promised “the most substantial reform to the UK’s asylum system in a generation” in November, and proposed a series of hardline policies to make the UK less attractive to migrants and refugees.
If you take a second to think about it, this poll makes sense. Your average Brit is having less kids than immigrants on top of the new immigrant arrivals annually. Every year, the demographics shifts more and more, and therefore it feels like the number of immigrants is growing even when it’s technically not the case.
One of the biggest reasons why I’ve always hated the Guardian is because they always pump these grand sounding articles with very strong slants, but conveniently keep out the most plausible explanations that pushes back against them. When the polling shows that 60-70% of the country think this way, you can no longer just chalk it up to “hurr durr people are dumb”, it clearly signifies something more substantive is happening.
Nothing I’ve seen the last several years invalidates the “people are dumb” argument.
It’s a meaningless statement because people are always stupid. You can’t infer anything of value from something like that. When you get opinion shifts in demographics this big, it represents a real world change that’s affecting people’s lives negatively. In this case the piss poor economy is causing people to stress and they’re blaming it on immigrants due to the changing demographics.
Good point, well made.
So how is birth rate vs immigration rate? You got some numbers right?
I’m not sure what you’re asking for exactly. My point is that the demographics of the country continue shifting every year, and this shift is visible on the ground. A lot of people are viewing this shift as an increase in immigration, even though immigration rates are technically down. If you want numbers, literally any chart that shows UK ethnic and religious demographics over the years will show this to be the case.