‘We are a gaslit nation.’
Around half of the British public are getting an essential fact about UK immigration wrong, amid attempts by the right-wing press to whip up a moral panic over the issue.
A poll carried out by YouGov has found that almost half of Brits believe that most immigration to the UK is illegal rather than legal. The poll found that 47% said they believe there’s more illegal immigration rather than legal.
However, the perception of almost half of Brits who believe that there is more illegal than legal migration is totally at odds with reality.
According to latest Home Office figures, there were 44,125 irregular arrivals in the year to March, 86% of whom arrived on small boats. That works out to be just 4% of the total 948,000 who immigrated to the UK during the same period.
Reacting to the news, LBC’s James O’Brien asked: “How the hell does half of the country end up thinking, that 4% is more than 96%? So 96% of people who have arrived in this country in the year to March, arrived regularly or legally.
“4% arrived irregularly, or if you prefer illegally.”
O’Brien then took aim at the architects of Brexit for perpetrating one massive lie after another.
He said: “They’ve moved on from wrecking the country as a consequence of one massive lie perpetrated on them by people who flee the scene of the crime before the flames even die down, on to the next massive lie, which is here, which we are now seeing the evidence of, we are seeing the evidence of what happens when people are fed an unleavened diet of misinformation and/or propaganda.
“They end up believing things that are catastrophically untrue. We are a gaslit nation.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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