Too many blame those with the quietest voices

There was a post on X last month that quoted an elderly British couple as supposedly saying they were leaving England “due to the amount of foreigners.” The account telling the story, Lord Miles Official, went on to say: “They told me they sold their property portfolio because foreigners kept not paying rent. They both had branded aluminum hand luggage worth $3k. Millionaires leaving the UK.”

Campaigner Brendan Cox responded with the question: “Leaving England because of the number of foreigners … to find a country with er … less foreigners?!”

There is not much else that really needs to be said about the absurd remarks of this couple or the Lord Miles Official account. But the level of misinformation being spouted by people like this seems to be getting worse.

I mentioned some figures in a previous op-ed I wrote that showed that, of the migrants coming into the UK, most were students on academic visas or health professionals on employment visas. The problem is that, rather than educating the electorate, politicians are simply pandering to certain misinformed views that are largely centered on hate.

A quick search on ChatGPT, which sourced His Majesty’s Government, The Independent, the Migration Observatory, The Times and the Evening Standard, found the following: “In the year ending December 2023, net migration to the UK was estimated at 685,000, a 10 percent decrease from the revised figure of 764,000 for the previous year. This suggests a potential downward trend, though it is too early to confirm.”

Politicians do not seem to be talking about the overseas students who pay inflated tuition fees or the health professionals who move to the UK to help with the shortage of qualified British doctors and nurses. Nor do they mention that the introduction of the Graduate Route visa is projected to yield a net fiscal benefit of £8.1 billion ($10.6 billion) over 10 years, as per a Migration Observatory analysis of Home Office figures.

And contrary to the views of some, while domestic students in the UK pay approximately £9,500 to £10,000 per year for an undergraduate course, overseas students pay double that.

Rather than educating the electorate, politicians are simply pandering to certain misinformed views that are largely centered on hate

Peter Harrison

I recently had a conversation with a fellow compatriot who told me, when I mentioned Brexit and the damage it had done and was still doing to the British economy, that I should get past this and move on. But the cost to the country’s economy resulting from leaving the EU is climbing.

Bloomberg columnist Matthew A. Winkler wrote last year: “Parting ways with the EU … has been disastrous for the UK.” The same publication reported in 2023 that Brexit was costing the British economy £100 billion every year through lost investment and labor shortages, among other factors.

Before Brexit, people from the European mainland would travel to the UK for seasonal work picking fruit and vegetables. Freedom of movement enabled them to do this and the farmers welcomed them with open arms. It was a workforce of willing and able people who turned up, did the work and then left. Some may have stayed, but most went back home to their families.

So, are politicians admitting this was a mistake and looking to repair the damage? Apparently not, as many are sticking to the hate-fueled anti-migrant message, because hate is easier to peddle.

Another group of people seemingly targeted by the politicians are those in receipt of benefits. Last month, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones used the example of pocket money when talking about benefits cuts for disabled people. The government’s own analysis suggested that more than 3 million families would be an average of £1,720 a year worse off by 2030 due to its welfare cuts. But the minister said this analysis did not take into account “extra cash for training,” adding that it was like his children getting a Saturday job on top of their pocket money. He later apologized after his comments were branded “offensive” and “patronizing,” admitting they were “tactless.”

But would he have apologized had the criticism not been so fast?

The truth is that there are people perfectly capable of working in the UK who do not because they say they would be worse off than if they remained on benefits. But they are a tiny minority.

Of course, it is much easier to blame others, especially those with a different mindset, set of beliefs or skin color

Peter Harrison

According to the Office of National Statistics, in the final quarter of 2024, 4.4 percent of people in the UK of working age were unemployed — that is 1.6 million people. But fewer than 20,000 of them were simply “discouraged” or unwilling to work. Something needs to be done about those people, but they are not the drain on resources the government seems to want us to believe.

The intriguing thing is that, despite all this information being freely available, people around the world are still being driven by hate. And of course, it is much easier to blame others, especially those with a different mindset, set of beliefs or skin color.

I remember a conversation I had about 20 years ago, in which I said Western politics had hit a wall and that ultimately the voting public would tire of the cyclical nature of one group of well-intended politicians in gray suits taking over from another. I argued that people would start to recognize that little was changing, irrespective of who was in power.

British politics will continue in this loop until major wholesale changes take place. I suspect this will be through a change in the voting system that could ultimately force political parties to work together.

But until this happens, politicians will probably continue blaming those with the least amount of power, whether that is single parents, unemployed disabled people or those driven away from their home countries by abject poverty or war.

Little in British society will change, but many will continue to blame those with the quietest voices.

• Peter Harrison is a senior editor at Arab News in the Dubai office. He has covered the Middle East for more than a decade. X: @PhotoPJHarrison