Immigration Tops List of Most Important Issues for U.K. Citizens

Anti-immigrant demonstrations have descended into violent riots wreaking havoc in cities across the United Kingdom. Over 400 arrests have been made, as far-right protesters set hotels that house asylum-seekers ablaze, throw bricks at mosques, attack riot police, and loot stores.

The violence began after a week of riots following the murder of three young girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in the town of Southport. At the heart of the demonstrations was a conspiracy theory, spread on social media, based on a falsehood that the perpetrator was Muslim, an asylum-seeker, or both.

Just hours after the attack, an account on X called Europe Invasion “confirmed” the attacker to be a Muslim man who traveled to the U.K. by boat last year. The post has been viewed 1.4 million times. Internet influencer Andrew Tate said in a video on X that the attacker was an “illegal immigrant.” Founder of the far-right English Defence League Tommy Robinson has spread the lie to his 800,000 X followers that immigrants are “hunting down the city’s White minority.” 

Reporting restrictions that had prevented the naming of the suspect, who is under the age of 18, were lifted to stop the spread of misinformation. The suspect, Alex Rudakubana, is a British citizen who was born in the Welsh capital of Cardiff. He is of Rwandan Christian heritage.

Still, rumors persist, and violence continues. The uprising is presenting a difficult first test for newly elected Prime Minister Kier Starmer of the Labour Party, who has said the rioters will “.” Starmer and Labour recently won a landslide victory in the U.K.’s July elections, but their victory over the opposition Conservative Party was in part bolstered by the far right’s popularity, which split the right-wing vote.

Anti-immigration sentiment popularized by Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, is often cited as a major impetus for Brexit, or Britain’s choice in 2015 to leave the European Union. A key promise of the Brexit campaign was that it would give the U.K. more control over its borders; but immigration has gone up, not down, post-Brexit.

This past July, Farage campaigned for Parliament largely on the immigration issue, saying he wanted a “freeze” on non-essential immigration into the country, which he has blamed for National Health Service waiting lists, the housing crisis, high cost of living, and violent crime. He and his supporters believe Britain is “in decline culturally” and that stopping immigration would allow the country to “at least try to catch up.” 

Farage is under fire for inciting the recent violence. As false narratives rapidly spread online after the violent stabbing attack, Farage suggested that the “truth is being withheld” from the public about the perpetrator. Farage has since publicly denounced the violence, writing in a post on X that “the levels of intimidation and threat to life have no place in a functioning democracy.”

While Farage has comparatively little support nationally – Reform UK holds only five of 650 seats in Parliament – anti-immigrant sentiment is certainly present in the country. Polling from the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory shows that 52% of Britons think the number of immigrants coming to the U.K. should be reduced “a lot” or “a little,” while 22% think immigration should “remain the same” and 14% think it should increase “a lot” or “a little.”

Immigration tops the list of the most important national issues for U.K. citizens for the first time since 2016, according to recent YouGov polling. Following the riots, concerns about immigration have skyrocketed: Over half (51%) of U.K. citizens selected immigration as the most important issue facing the country, a 10-point increase since mid-July. Broken down by party, 90% of Reform UK voters think immigration is the most important issue facing the country, while 76% of Conservative voters and 34% of Labour voters feel the same.

Voter frustrations with immigration are fueled by increasing instances of illegal crossings of the English Channel. Government housing policies for asylum-seekers have fanned flames, costing taxpayers 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) in 2023. This comes as public services are failing and the government continues to struggle with high inflation and prices.

The frictions present in these riots are not a particularly British phenomenon. Anti-immigrant sentiment is fueling nationalist rhetoric, demonstrations, and political careers across Europe and the United States.

“These are tensions that you see in a lot of countries right now,” sociologist Stephanie Alice Baker, who studies crowd behavior and the far right, told the AP. “You have emerging feelings of nationalism, a sense that people are being left behind, a sense that people’s freedoms are being denied, that the sovereignty of the nation is at stake. And a lot of this really coincides with a rise of immigration and a cost-of-living crisis.”

Politicians in France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, and other European countries have campaigned on harsher immigration measures as increased instances of conflict and natural disasters continue to force hundreds of thousands of people out of their home countries and into Western democracies.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is making immigration central to his reelection campaign, calling movement across America’s southern border a “migrant invasion” and saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” His rhetoric surrounding migrants is viewed by some as extreme, but most Americans agree that immigration is a major problem facing the country.

Gallup polling shows that 55% of Americans believe immigration should be decreased, and 19% of Americans think immigration is the number one issue facing the country as of July, a 9-point drop from the February-March high of 28%. Other Gallup polling shows that just two-thirds (68%) of Americans consider immigration a good thing for the country, the lowest percentage since 2014.

Anti-immigrant sentiment often increases alongside immigration, a positive correlation present in both the U.K. and its Atlantic ally. Southern border crossings into America exploded after pandemic-era restrictions were lifted, and there were a record-high 250,000 migrant encounters in December 2023 alone, according to government statistics. An overwhelming 80% of Americans think the government is doing a poor job handling the migrant influx, according to Pew Research Center, with 45% calling the situation a “crisis” and 32% calling it a “major problem.”

As increases in immigration inundate outdated systems, the world begins to feel the downwind effects. The U.K. and the U.S. share many similarities – it remains to be seen whether violent protests over immigration will be one of them.