UK is addicted to cheap, imported labour, former party leader says
In an interview with Sky News, Nigel Farage shared his view on Britain recording its highest net migration figure in history.
Former leader of the Brexit Party and UKIP Nigel Farage has claimed that post-Brexit net immigration to the UK would have fallen below 50,000 a year if he had been in charge, and has not ruled out a return to the frontline of politics to fight the „dishonest, globalist” ruling party that betrayed Brexit voters. In the interview with Sky News, he openly criticised the British government’s economic and immigration policies. He told the interviewer that the Conservative party had never been serious about implementing the socially conservative pledges its multiple leaders had made during successive general elections.
The former party leader believes that the problem started during the premiership of Boris Johnson, who instead of enacting a new immigration policy to reduce the numbers, encouraged mass immigration to the UK.
„If they put me in charge of it, I would have got it down to 50,000 a year, no question about it.”@Nigel_Farage insists that he would have met his 2016 pledge to cut net migration down in the UK.#Rigby https://t.co/PAiZ4D1jU3
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/qkgn5Pyfha
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 25, 2023
When asked if he would have workforce shortages in order to drive down net migration, Mr Farage clearly answered in the affirmative.
„If that meant there was a realistic chance of people finding somewhere to live, a school for their kids to go to that was local, people getting access to the National Health Service, then yes, of course. […] We got addicted to cheap, unskilled, foreign, imported labour,”
Nigel Farage said, insisting it was high time this policy of mass immigration was reversed.
Britain saw net migration of 606 thousand people in the last calendar year, 118 thousand more than a year earlier, as revealed by the report published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Calculated over a twelve-month period, net immigration to Great Britain has never reached such a level.
2022 figures reveal that 1.16 million people moved to Great Britain from abroad in 2022, while long-term emigration was 557 thousand. ONS data show that 151 thousand of the new immigrants came from the European Union, while 202 thousand EU citizens left, with the number of EU citizens living in Britain dropping by a net 51,000 last year.
The vast majority of people arriving – 925 thousand – were non-EU nationals. The number of people immigrating to the UK from non-EU countries increased by 287 thousand in one year, according to the ONS report released on Thursday. Most non-EU immigrants arrived in the UK for work related reasons, the report says.
As previously reported by V4NA, Britain needs to build an extra 250,000 homes just to accommodate the record number of migrants who arrived last year, analysts have warned. According to the international financial services company Investec, the chronic undersupply of homes in the UK would be worsened by the mass influx of migrants in 2022, adding to demand and pushing rents and house prices sky high. This trend is expected to continue in 2023.
The experts believe that the above-mentioned 250,000 new homes can only alleviate, but cannot eliminate the pressing problem.
In wake of the latest migration figures, Investec warned that the Government may need to revise its target to build 300,000 homes per year because the number was based on forecasts of inward migration that were much lower than actual current levels. It lends itself to the conclusion that the expected drop in net migration and its impact on housing demand is not happening, the investment bank believes.