Population growth of 700,000 is not acceptable. The Tories must disown Boris Johnson
It is also, most importantly, the amount by which the population of England and Wales jumped between mid-2023 and mid-2024, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics today. Of that increase, 690,000 were accounted for by net migration.
That is the second largest annual jump in our population in numerical terms, in the 75 years over which the figure has been measured – only out-stripped by the growth the previous year, of 820,000 people. In short, that has meant that the population of England and Wales grew by 1.5 million in two years – with all the inevitable consequences that that will have on housing, public services, transport infrastructure, and more. It is a ludicrous, unprecedented, and lamentable state of affairs. But it can at least be blamed on the government of one man: Boris Johnson.
Many felt voting for Johnson in 2019 was a patriotic duty: to get Brexit done, to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of office, and to deliver the step change in Britain's government that the alliance with Dominic Cummings seemed to herald. One pandemic, three prime ministers, a rolling set of crises later, and the country's ardour for the former Tory leader has cooled. Despite his undoubted abilities as a communicator and commentator, and despite his boisterous eight years at City Hall, Johnson proved a hopeless PM, unable to match the historic moment to which he was called.
Perhaps most consequentially, he was the Prime Minister who presided over the implementation of our post-Brexit immigration system. Despite repeated Conservative pledges to control and reduce immigration, Johnson presided over an explosion in numbers as the requirements for entry were rapidly loosened. This was the so-called Boriswave: the huge numbers of students, care workers, Deliveroo drivers, and legions of dependents that saw our legal immigration levels surge to three times the rate they were when we voted for Brexit – a peak of 906,000 in the year ending June 2023 – all while the small boats kept coming.
The Boriswave will surely be Johnson's political legacy. Not taking us out of the European Union, or delivering the 2012 London Olympics, but an immigration explosion that not only entails substantial long-term demographic and fiscal costs, and which has perhaps permanently blackened the Conservatives' record on immigration.
Poll after poll since last year's election has suggested that immigration was the number one reason why voters abandoned the Tories for Reform. Johnson might be plotting a comeback, but to welcome back into the fray the leader who presided over this disaster would be an even greater calamity.
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