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  • under Eric, both thank you for sparing the time to join us the day after the government published its immigration plans to those people who is saying what people wanted was control, not necessarily dropping the numbers way had someone from vote leave on the break in last night saying that all they wanted was control.

  • We had Nigel for, are saying no.

  • They wanted numbers down.

  • Who's right?

  • And does it look like this policy will do the what they hope it'll be different Levers wanted different things on DSO.

  • Does control mean reduce?

  • For Boris Johnson's view is that control is what mattered.

  • Those people want reductions in immigration or selective reduces.

  • They don't want to reduce students.

  • They don't want to reduce high skilled immigration.

  • They don't want to reduce scientists.

  • They wantto have Maur immigration of the type that the prime minister is letting in.

  • Some people then say, but the numbers really need to fall on.

  • Other people are saying, if I've controlled the flows I want, that's what I was doing, So we've got we've got a much more granular immigration debate which comes down to the politics off low skilled and semiskilled immigration from the U.

  • There's actually a big consensus across parties now, with the government having dropped the net migration target that Students Guild migration on what we're debating.

  • That's where the public always were.

  • So I think Boris Johnson has shifted in the direction off the public.

  • There's a breaching agenda that probably half of the leave vote felt very strongly that they wanted big reductions in numbers.

  • Other bits of the leave vote thought that it was the pace of low skilled and semiskilled immigration they're worried about.

  • Hey, do you think this does the trick politically from serving the voters that helped Boris Johnson win the referendum?

  • And when the general well, I don't think it is about control only.

  • Actually, I think you look what I think's happened is you've got a liberalization of attitudes within a part of the British electorate voted, remain or that voted for the Labour Party or liberal Democrats.

  • But you haven't seen that liberalization in the part of the electric motor for Johnson voted for Brexit, for example, this is the kind of polarization party polarization of immigration attitudes we see in the United States and Canada, for example, I think something similares occurring in Britain.

  • You compare 2010 and 2019.

  • From what I've seen, the gap between Labour and conservative voters on the question of whether immigration should be reduced has doubled in size.

  • So I think those voters for Johnson and for Brexit do want a reduction on Di.

  • Don't think that question is gonna go away.

  • But what I would say is that we're in an unusual moment now because Brexit and the economic future of Britain and the political future of Britain, or what people are talking about.

  • And so quite naturally, the immigration issue has dropped down the agenda.

  • The question really didn't ask is in perhaps a year's time when if Brexit is a success economically and that's a big if.

  • But if it is a success economically, then there's gonna be more room for other issues to rise.

  • Our suspect on the sort of leave voting Brexit or Johnson supporting side, you're going to see the profile of immigration rising salience.

  • What we would say is, how long, how high a priority is immigration?

  • Yes, you want less of it.

  • But as a mission compared to health care and the economy, where does it rank for you?

  • And I think you will see a higher ranking.

  • If Brexit is an economic success has gone down from issue number 123 to issue number 10 also hasn't it into some of the public.

  • You think What's gonna bring it back up?

  • Well, so so the priority oven issues determined by a number of things.

  • One is is immigration numbers.

  • A second is competing issues.

  • So if you're in an economic recession or Brexit happens, that's dominating headlines.

  • Immigration is not in the headlines.

  • It's gonna drop as a priority.

  • But if these other issues, particularly Brexit, drops off the headlines, there is a question.

  • What, then replaces it as the issue people are talking about?

  • I would suspect that immigration will be an issue that is maybe talked about Maur if economically, Brexit is is fine and people stop talking and worrying about it.

  • So in a way, the salience of Brexit has crowded out sailings of immigration.

  • We can see similar dynamics that we look at the you know, if you think other things, I think other things have changed.

  • Sailors.

  • If you go back to 2010 11 and 2/3 of the electric was saying, We don't talk about this enough.

  • I'm not sure we're allowed to talk about if you were the very liberal end of the day.

  • You see, I don't have been banging on about it for decades.

  • I don't think that's true.

  • It's much, much harder on people, much less likely to say now.

  • We're not allowed to talk about immigration because we have way concerned a bit, so it's cathartic in a way and that it felt powerful.

  • Two people that were there, the prime minister or the treasure.

  • We thought you should vote one way they could vote the other way.

  • Once you do that and you've got the control, you've got a much more pragmatic granular debate because they will control selectivity.

  • But they will be pragmatic, therefore care.

  • But that's a big part of the job, done as far as you see it.

  • Yes, it's still polarized politically because the voters that were anti migration of labour have drifted.

  • The Conservatives, some of the conservative remains, have gone to the liberal Democrats and so on.

  • But the salient struck and this is very different from America.

  • Where would about Donald Trump tweeting about it.

  • The Democrats very excited about it.

  • Both sides really, you know, flaming up there.

  • There's a lot more than most people in putting a balance is most people in Britain, Sea pressures of immigration, gains of immigration are making distinctions between immigration that they don't have a problem with the tall and immigration where it makes a contribution.

  • But you want to control.

  • I think there's definitely some trick to what you say in terms of which categories of immigration the voters are keen Iran and less king on.

  • But I think even within that there is a desire for for limited numbers, that is important.

  • And I think it's important electric electorally in America again.

  • It's the Republican side where you have very high salience of immigration, much more so than the Democratsside and similarly here that issue's gonna matter a lot more to your leave voter, for example, Jones and voter.

  • I think that the other thing to bear in mind is that because a lot of Brexit, a lot of Brexit voters think that once you have control, numbers are gonna fall.

  • The expectation is that yes, we have control.

  • But control also means reduced numbers in some of the surveys that I've done.

  • For example, if you tell people that post Brexit numbers they're not gonna fall, who are you gonna vote for?

  • Ah, lot of the voters, for exact.

  • This was in 2017.

  • A lot of the voters from UKIP that went over to the Conservatives are gonna said they would go back to UKIP.

  • And so I suspect there is a very significant and important group of voters who, if after Brexit, someone says, Hey, look, the numbers haven't come down.

  • The government's in control, but they're admitting these numbers.

  • It's not a real it's not what we voted for.

  • And we've already seen editorials from the likes of Ian Duncan Smith saying, You know, we're importing a 1,000,000 people every three years and so on.

  • Boris Johnson, the referendum campaign said, importing the city the size of new cars, Boris Johnson's changed his mind.

  • Actually, that time in office on Day one, he says, the net migration target's gone.

  • It's quite sensible to ditch it.

  • You've missed it 39 quarters.

  • It's not about me, it's not credible at all.

  • I'm not going to play a numbers game and actually enter the general election campaign, saying We will curb low skilled immigration.

  • It's drawing the campaign.

  • They then say, and overall numbers will form and you'll tell us exactly yesterday was saying numbers before, But this is what they couldn't tell us.

  • Buy it.

  • Yes, it by how much and they go in.

  • If you read their manifesto, the policy package won't cut the numbers.

  • It will give you different controls because the immigration is going to cut out you.

  • Low skilled immigration has fallen away a lot since the referendum is the value of the pound and salt on there.

  • They are loosening the policy on popular, non EU skilled migration that their policy is to increase the flows off.

  • The immigration is currently high on to curb the immigration that dropped significantly.

  • If employers are going to be allowed to even go first abroad and look abroad for skilled workers and not hit.

  • I think that Eric something that you think voters will be okay ways where I suppose there is another way of asking where does the concern about immigration really come from?

  • Well, I mean, what I would say is the academic literature shows pretty clearly that the main driver of immigration tends to be psychological and cultural rather than economic.

  • So late coming.

  • Put that in layman's terms.

  • Okay, so around the community and feeding people don't look like you.

  • Well, well, well, ethnically ethnic change.

  • Yes, ethnic change.

  • Now it's not.

  • It may not be race.

  • It could be language.

  • It could be religion.

  • But what I would say is, so just a sample question.

  • I'll give you a question.

  • Which says, if you ask Brexit voters how important an issue for you is, pressure on public service is zero not important at all.

  • 100 extremely important.

  • You get about a 49 or 50 out of 100 moderately important issue if you just dropped two words.

  • Immigrants Putting pressure on public service is it's up to sort of 70 or 75 so why would obviously the part of the problem of pressure public service is accounted for by immigration must be smaller than the problem of public service is.

  • It makes no sense, except if you, if you understand that the immigration attitudes are formed.

  • Four views on public service's public service is then come to be colored by one's views on immigration.

  • So it's not the pressure per se on economics or competition for jobs that's driving these attitudes.

  • It's much more about these subtler psychological and cultural drives.

  • And that's one of the reasons why I'm very skeptical of the idea that talking about skills or the economic impact is really getting it the drivers that are actually shifting politics.

  • But if the people who are coming into the country are blatantly, ah, super middle class, better, better earners, highly skilled, contributing to the national treasury take and the rest of it through their taxes on dhe.

  • By definition, you think not putting pressure on service is because they're actually that their contributions outweigh the pressure.

  • People still gonna go with that because that seems to be the gamble that Boris Johnson is making you say, No, I really don't think they will.

  • I mean, I think they will to some extent, obviously, yes, if immigrants, by the way, who already generally are contributing more than they're taking away.

  • So I actually but that's well, yeah, but I think, though, that it's ultimately these material factors or not, what Dr Opinion And so, for example, I have done another study where we've said Okay, you know, if immigration remains the same after Brexit same levels or even increases slightly, but the skill mix goes up.

  • Are you happy with that?

  • And that does reduce opposition to some degree to immigration.

  • But when you introduce, for example, that this is gonna bring a faster rate of ethno cultural change, then all of a sudden you get a shift by 20 as much as 2025 points in attitudes.

  • Because once that framing comes in, it changes people's outlook.

  • So I think, yes, people want skilled compared to unskilled, but within a context in which that cultural change that they're seeking to slow down occur.

  • So I'm the question.

  • I can't predict exactly when we're going to start to see this new narrative.

  • It's not necessarily gonna be framed in cultural terms because that's very contentious, and that could be easily labeled his racist.

  • So it's gonna be very difficult.

  • There will be a narrative that might be that we were betrayed and we voted for Brexit.

  • We didn't get BU thing is coming.

  • Do you think it is coming?

  • Let let's see what what the real driver walls over 15 and 20 years was that the British public lost confidence in whether their governments competent on the question of immigration, and they had good reasons to lose confidence.

  • You had you had labour governments that had no idea at all that the flow of East European migrants was going to come.

  • And then the public feel they were very slow to respond to that 2000 for 2008.

  • You then had a government with David Cameron and to ease in May.

  • And they say we have got a plan.

  • We will sort out hundreds of thousands out tens of thousands in leave it to us.

  • And of course the opposite happened.

  • So there is good evidence the public that the politicians have not had a grip and said things like that.

  • So do you get cancer?

  • And what?

  • Why is a point system in Australia entire point system So incredibly resident, Everybody has heard of that.

  • It stands for control.

  • It sounds for selectivity, Andi.

  • It stands for pragmatism.

  • Way we want in.

  • This country knows somebody who lives in Australia and stands for something else as well.