We have no idea how many people are living in Britain

A few years ago, a conspiracy theory was born, based on the idea that the population of Britain was far larger than the government claimed. This was known to be true because receipts from Tesco, the country’s largest supermarket, gave an indication of how many people were buying everyday necessities, and these sales were too high to be explained by the official figures.

This supermarket conspiracy of Tesco truthers was mostly covered as entertainment, and Buzzfeed even did a de-bunking, lamenting ‘Rather than trusting the official stats which place the UK population at 64 million, this band of Ukip-ers, conspiracy theorists, and other assorted migration obsessives are adamant that you can really tell the UK population from the amount of food bought – and the amount of sewage which goes out the other end.’

Twenty million extra people clearly sounds implausible but, as with many conspiracy theories, there is a hard version and a soft version, and the idea that the real population is much higher than stated is not only plausible, but likely – and with significant consequences for most public services.