In the space of about one month a further 9 per cent of the electorate has decided that the views of Reform UK accord with their own take on the world, putting Nigel Farage’s party well ahead of the government in the polls and leaving the Conservatives trailing Ed Davey’s cavalcade of grinning village idiots. The Greens are not that far behind the Tories, either, on 10 per cent. This means that policies which were once considered extreme, such as the immediate joyous jettisoning of all that diversity, equality and inclusion rubbish and drastic action taken against asylum seekers, are now considered acceptable by almost a third of the electorate.
Good. It is perhaps one reason why Sir Keir Starmer seemed to channel Enoch Powell last week with that stuff about us being an island of strangers – unconsciously channelling, according to David Goodhart, though I would beg to differ. The Prime Minister knew what he was doing. Whatever – this is on the face of it a dramatic change in the way a hefty proportion of the electorate think about stuff, and my suspicion is that quite soon the notion of remigration might commend itself to this growing minority, even if Reform UK has never raised the issue (while others, such as Germany’s AfD, have done so).
It is fashionable to refer to this change in mindset as being a shifting of the Overton window. This window is not named after the pleasant village in Hampshire, but after Joseph Overton, an American political scientist who died in a plane crash at the beginning of this century. It is best to think of the Overton window as being akin to a dormer window in your partly converted attic where your teenage children take drugs, watch porn and masturbate while you believe them to be finishing their A-level revision.
The Overton window is used to explain large shifts in public opinion and operates on a vertical axis of policies with ‘unthinkable’ at either end of the scale, moving through a mirrored list of viewpoints: radical, acceptable, sensible, popular, to ‘policy’ at the centre. The point is that while this window can shift – imagine your daughter raising the dormer to let out the skunk fumes – the job of the government is to stay within the middle section and the category marked as ‘policy’. Failure to do so will result in political defeat for the government. The thesis, then, is that the Overton window has shifted so comprehensively on the issue of migration that nimble-toed Keir now feels it appropriate to deliver speeches in which he says: ‘Gawd, they come over ’ere wiv their entire families, can’t speak a word of bleedin’ English and they’re on the dole before you can say Gunga Din.’ Or similar.
I don’t doubt that visible public opinion has shifted, as evidenced by those opinion polls, but I don’t think the dormer window is an appropriate simulacrum to explain that shift – and while the late Mr Overton and his window might go some way to explaining what governments must do in a two-
party state with a pristine, unbiased broadcast and social media, it is insufficiently complex to explain what is happening both here and across Europe.
My contention is that the British people have had enough of immigration for a very long time
My contention is that the British people have had enough of immigration for a very long time and that the supposed greater tolerance towards it in latter years was largely the consequence of loaded opinion poll questions, a biased media and operant conditioning on the part of the general public, which knows what it is meant to say when a nice young middle-class person asks if the UK is a better or worse place to live in as a consequence of immigration. Even despite this, the latest polls show that a majority (52 per cent) want it reduced either by a lot or very little. There has been a process at work, though, which has allowed people to express themselves on the issue in a way which they could not before.
The first and most obvious was Reform UK’s success first at the July 2024 general election and even more so, its victory in the local authority elections this month. What those triumphs did was show voters that here was a party which espoused a radical reduction in immigration and could do so while achieving great electoral success. In other words, hitherto the public (or a large section of it) did not think that hugely reducing immigration was itself ‘unthinkable’, as the Overton model might have put it – simply that there was no conduit for the voters to see that aspiration realised.
That has changed and it will change still further with future Reform successes – as I mentioned a few weeks ago, Reform’s winning of seats was potentially exponential, in that every seat they win leads ineluctably to them winning more (and thus the merciful death of our two-party system).
Then there is the sheer weight of numbers coming in, and the seeming impossibility of being able to deport any of them, plus a growing awareness that simply shouting ‘racist’ at anyone who wishes immigration to be reduced is embarrassing and juvenile. But there is more. I would suggest that the growing list of cities and towns across the UK which have a Gaza-obsessed Muslim mayor or council leader probably also resonates a little with the average voter. Those old complaints from the ‘racists’ that the white English would become a minority in their own country is now, visibly once again, not something to be quite so easily pooh-poohed.
Then there is the legitimacy given to counter-immigration measures, first by Reform and second by those politicians – step forward Sir Keir and Kemi – who wish to hang on Reform’s coat-tails. All of this contributes to that apparent vast and rapid shift of opinion: it hasn’t really shifted much at all, it’s just that it seems more realisable now than was previously the case.
There’s still the BBC and ITN to contend with, of course. My answer would be to abolish one and ignore the other.
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