Immmigration was again in the news this weekend as more evidence showed the importance of this issue to voters.
First, a Sunday Times poll commissioned by Migration Watch found that the Conservatives would benefit if they pledged to slash the numbers of immigrants entering Britain.
The ST report says:
YouGov found that 85% of people in the Labour marginals were worried about the population reaching 70m, with 49% saying they were “very worried”.
The poll found that 44% in Labour marginals would be more likely to vote Conservative if Cameron were to say outright that a Tory government would reduce immigration to 50,000 or below.
The poll comes after David Cameron told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that he believed that Labour’s immigration policy had been too high. “We should see net immigration in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands.”, Cameron said.
Further to this, the Equality and Human Rights Commission released a new report examining the effects of Eastern European migration, five years on. The report itself concluded that “There is no strong reason to expect a significant negative impact on wages or employment in response to the recent immigrant influx” and yet this was still widely translated in the media as “Immigration ‘has hit the low paid’”. With this wide based perception, it is no surprise that this issue matters so much to voters.
The news that the Tories would be the main beneficiaries in Labour marginals from having a tougher immigration policy is bad news for the BNP. It shows that when it comes to sensitive issues like immigration and social cohesion the Conservatives are trusted more by the British electorate than any other party.
Furthermore, the poll shows how the Conservatives can win in Labour heartlands, areas where the BNP have been attempting to break into since 2005.
No one is calling for a bidding war between the BNP and the Tories over immigration, but the YouGov poll is an important insight into how the electorate are desperately calling for the mainstream to show some initiative on this issue.
Nothing British hopes that the mainstream parties realize that saying nothing on this issue is not an option.