"Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said there was a clear case in principle that what we've seen in the past couple of years is a historically unprecedented dual negative shift in sentiment on immigration."
"Sunder Katwala, the director of the thinktank British Future, said there had been a hardening of the political debate around immigration since 2022, with parties concerned over the accusation, made after the Brexit referendum, that they had not listened to concerns and reacted too slowly."
"I think there's an element of overcompensation, he said. You end up almost ventriloquising a cartoonish caricature of what the politicians think the public wants to hear, which might be harder than where the public actually are."
An analysis of 100 years of parliamentary speeches reveals a significant rightward shift in how Labour and Conservative MPs discuss immigration. The proportion of House of Commons speeches about immigration has grown from 1% before 2000 to 5.4% by 2023. Both major parties have adopted increasingly hostile language toward asylum and immigration, competing to appear tougher on the issue since Reform UK's rise. Experts attribute this to parties overcompensating for post-Brexit criticism about not listening to public concerns. The shift represents a historically unprecedented dual negative sentiment change, with politicians adopting exaggerated positions they believe the public wants rather than reflecting actual public opinion.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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