Priti Patel’s migration defence was a serious misstep

This week looks to be a significant one for polling in British politics. For the first time, every poll released across seven pollsters has had the Reform ahead of the Conservatives. So it is regrettable for Tory chances then, that an interview by Priti Patel has reignited debate around her party’s failure on mass migration. This failure is cited as the single biggest reason why 2019 Tory voters abandoned the Conservatives last year, according to the most comprehensive study to date.

Speaking to Harry Cole on TalkTV, the Shadow Foreign Secretary was asked about the explosion of arrivals on her watch. As Home Secretary under Boris Johnson, net migration figures rose from 271,000 in 2019 to 872,000 in 2022 when she left office. Asked to justify this, Patel sought to defend her record. She argued that the UK had ended free movement by leaving the European Union. Cole retorted that this was to then simply ‘throw open the borders’ to the rest of the world.