You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks: Migration Has Always Been Used As A Political Weapon

The weaponisation of immigration by the far-right, perpetuated by political figures and streamlined by prominent media outlets, hardly needs introduction. We can scarcely escape news stories of immigrants and asylum seekers, dominating weekly headlines.

Last week in the United Kingdom, men in black masks blocked traffic at the Port of Dover, and then later at Portsmouth, in order to prevent a small boat carrying 140 asylum seekers across the Channel being taken to the processing centre. 

Only this month, the issue of immigration has been bolstered as the European Union called an ‘emergency meeting’ to discuss the ‘migration crisis’ in Spain following the influx of 60,000 migrants via the Moroccan border into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.

In the House of Commons, consecutive Prime Ministers have used anti-immigration rhetoric as a prominent feature of their campaign in a bid to appeal to voters swayed by the far-right – from Rishi Sunak’s ‘stop the boats’ pledge to Keir Starmer’s rehashing of the ‘island of strangers’ narrative.  

Whilst politicians across the ideological spectrum have moved immigration to the centre of political dialogue, none have done more so than Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK and trailblazer of the immigration-gone-too-far rhetoric. Delivering a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Great Britain in July 2026, Farage referred to our domestic political climate as a ‘battle for the very soul of our nation’ in which ‘our values are under attack.’ Utilising the language of security, he positioned the issue of immigration and of cultural diversity as a threat to our nation, personifying Britain as ‘broken’ and a ‘patient [who] is very sick.’ He attempted to rally his supporters around the national flag, declaring that we ‘fought world wars’ to be free to disagree.

As Farage attempts to rehash the past to gain support for broader immigration restrictions in the present, a counter examination of the history of immigration with a broader emphasis on reality is necessary. We must understand how and why immigration is used as a political weapon. 

Immigration is not a new scapegoat.

In his CPAC GB Speech, Farage claimed that the United Kingdom is a tolerant nation, citing the relationship with the Commonwealth and collaboration with other nations during the Second World War. This mythological ‘tolerance’ is somewhat dubious, considering that an independent inquiry into the Windrush Scandal found that ‘during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black and brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK.’

A study examining a century of immigration rhetoric in the UK parliament finds few instances before 1948. Immigration only became a major policy area after the Second World War when mass immigration from the Commonwealth prompted a political response. 

Both Labour and the Conservative Party adopted a ‘laissez-faire’ attitude towards immigration at first, however discourse became more contentious when the issue moved from war-time cabinet meetings to parliament.

This backlash was epitomised by Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in which Powell declared that soon ‘ordinary Englishmen’ and the ‘native-born worker’ would find themselves ‘made strangers in their own country’. Powell, a Conservative MP and scholar, used his speech to  lash out against mass immigration from the Commonwealth after the Second World War and express his opposition to the 1968 Race Relations Bill (banning racial discrimination in housing and employment). 

Similarly to Farage, Enoch Powell had claimed (without substance) that Indian migration would mean that ‘white working classes could not obtain hospital beds, school places or housing.’ The current far-right perpetuates this tradition, equating immigration as an existential threat to British lives and society. There are countless instances of inherently problematic approaches to immigration in British political history which are being repeated and rehashed by today’s politicians. We must only look to the history books to observe these repeating patterns.

In a UK government report about the Windrush scandal, Home Office official W.N Hyde wrote ‘people in the future are going to be astonished at the almost accidental way in which this country has acquired half a million coloured immigrants without giving thought to the implications of doing so…’. In the Thatcherite era, immigration became a more frequent subject of parliamentary debate, and as legislation passed such as the Maastricht Treaty 1992 and the 2004 and 2007 Eastern enlargements, the debate became even more polarised. Positive sentiment on immigration continued to decline into the 2000s. According to Ipsos, in the December 2019 General Election immigration was only the ninth ‘most important issue’ facing the country. 

The entry of Reform UK into the political landscape, coming to prominence in the 2024 General Election, aligned with a sharp increase in immigration as a major polemic, as in October 2024 immigration was recorded as a top issue of concern for the first time since 2016.   

The racialisation of immigration

Decades of immigration rhetoric within the UK and more broadly in Europe have revealed the racialisation of immigration sentiment. A marked contrast can be identified between the ‘European Migrant Crisis’ of 2015, in which the EU responded by enhancing border security and preventing  migration to tackle a predominantly Middle Eastern immigrant influx, versus the prospect of Ukrainian refugees in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the UK for instance, 80% of those who had an unfavourable opinion of Muslims said that refugees arriving from Iraq or Syria were a ‘major threat’ to their country. Conversely, YouGov found that British citizens wanted the government to ‘do more’ to help refugees from Ukraine, and 89,000 Britons signed up to a government scheme to rehouse Ukrainians. Ukraine may sit on Europe’s borders, but the question must be begged: is it geographic proximity, skin colour or religious observance that makes Europeans more inclined to accept a Ukrainian over a Syrian. 

The media was particularly instrumental in stirring an ‘us and them’ narrative. ITV News Correspondent Lucy Watson reporting from Kyiv stated ‘This is not a developing third-world nation […] This is Europe’ whilst BFM TV journalist Phillip Corbe stated ‘We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime […] We’re talking about Europeans leaving cars that look like ours.’ Although these comments were likely intended to enhance the compassion for Ukrainians fleeing their homes, it has a sinister undertone. Only those who ‘look like’ us are welcome in our country. 

Even contemporary examples of the racialisation of immigration have their historical roots. The establishment of the Home Office in 1782 and the Aliens Office in 1793 were at their core intended to police Great Britain’s borders and maintain ‘security.’ Coincidingly, the Victorian period propelled ideas about race and nationality that led to narratives of British and European racial and ethnic supremacy. These narratives were used to justify imperialism and colonialism, as well as the rhetoric that our uniqueness and superiority had to be preserved and protected from the ‘other.’ Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ reflects the mood of this time, describing the ‘burden’ colonial nations had, the sense of responsibility they felt in sending soldiers to manage ‘sullen peoples’, who were dehumanised as primitive, described in the poem as  ‘half devil and half child.’ 

To succinctly sum up centuries of racial and ethnic discourse, British Liberal Prime Minister Lord Rosebery uttered in 1900 ‘What is empire, but the predominance of race?’ We therefore need to understand the weaponisation of immigration by the far-right not as a novel political phenomenon in response to a challenging domestic and international political environment, but as a longstanding culture of racism and racial supremacy not only in the United Kingdom but across Europe and beyond.

Why are the current far-right fixated on this issue specifically?

Nigel Farage is perhaps the loudest contemporary voice spearheading anti-immigration sentiment, but the grounds of his belief system were set centuries ago. Farage began as a Eurosceptic before moving firmly into immigration grounds with his formation of the UKIP party in 1993, having left the Conservative Party a year prior due to its adoption of the Maastricht Treaty. Immigration quickly became his default catch-all for any perceived problems within British society. He would even go so far as to blame traffic on the M4 to ‘open-door immigration’.  His fixation on this issue was successful, appealing to both older middle class voters ‘alienated by rapid social change caused by mass immigration’ and what Reform themselves describe as the ‘patriotic working class.’

Scapegoating immigrants and asylum seekers provides an enemy to blame for domestic political issues. In statements reminiscent of Enoch Powell, Farage linked lack of available housing to his claim that the UK had to ‘build a new house every two minutes’ for migrants, and immigration was blamed for the downfall of public services, wages, and crime. In this sense, the immigration narrative was effective in giving sections of the public an explanation for the stagnating quality of life they were experiencing. One interviewed resident of Clacton-on-Sea, Nigel Farage’s former parliamentary seat and an area with an unemployment rate of 47% told IPaper that residents are voting for Farage out of concern with the ‘cost of living’, ‘the NHS and roads’, ‘the economy’ and ‘jobs’, all of which were being successfully pinned on immigration.

The efficiency of immigration as a scapegoat narrative is displayed through levels of public support for far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson, whose 2018 arrest sparked protests as supporters viewed Robinson as speaking a truth that is being ‘silenced’ by the state. The far-right narrative on immigration also came to a head in 2024 with the domestic riots in Southport, attributed in large part to social media activity that stirred up and provoked hatred and violence following the tragic murder of three young girls, with the perpetrator wrongly accused on social media of being an asylum seeker who had arrived on a small boat. 

Why is this narrative a success?

At a time when trust in media and government are reaching an all time low, Farage has positioned himself as an anti-establishment figure (notwithstanding his own public school education and bourgeois familial background). In his address to the CPAC conference, he describes the ‘cowardice of the establishment’ in allowing people to ‘usurp our way of life’ and finishes by demanding his supporters whether they ‘back me or they back the establishment’ adding ‘let the people be my judge not the Westminster elite.’ A nod to the Clacton by-election. 

Reform’s use of nationalistic sentiment is consistent with theory on the intersection between nationalism and racism. In ‘Imagined Communities’, Benedict Anderson describes how the production of the printing press bolstered national sentiment, creating a ‘fraternity’ between citizens who had never met but experienced a togetherness that made them willing to die to protect their country and shared cultural values.

Historian Eric Hobsbawm describes how traditions and flags constructed nationalistic sentiment at the advent of the First World War. His theories point to the idea that having a common external threat unites a population together to the benefit of political leaders.

Nigel Farage’s use of the ‘foreigner’ as a ‘threat’ to our society can be analysed from this lens, his populist statements and slogans are reminiscent of war-time propaganda [‘Your country needs you!’]. By securitizing the threat of the ‘other’ and personifying Britain, he hopes to bolster nationalist sentiment, creating a sense of ‘us and them’, to attract voters and generate public unity in his favour. A similar tactic used by other populist politicians, Hungary’s former president Victor Orbán who famously said ‘all terrorists are basically migrants’, and US President Donald Trump who remarked that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ 

Trump’s evocation of World War Two and the British Empire in his recent speech only solidifies this line of analysis, as he attempts to reach into the glory of the past in a ‘Make America Great Again’ fashion.

Reform has its greatest success amongst the over 55+ section of the population, a generation who grew up in a time in which the legacy of colonialism and British exceptionalism was still dominant in public life, education and political dialogue. This was a period when racism and imperialism were normalised through dispersal of racist caricatures and imperial narratives in children’s books, nursery rhymes, and bolstered by the national curriculum, which implied superiority of British values and culture. Classrooms featured maps of the British Empire and the curriculum cultivated ‘imperial’ and ‘ethnocentric’ values. The celebration of ‘Empire Day‘, for instance, only halted in 1958.

For a generation that grew up in this time of heightened nationalistic pride, offensive and suspicious depiction of foreigners, and in the fading glory of a by-gone Empire, Nigel Farage’s dialogue is effective in evoking the ‘glory’ of the past and the British exceptionalism that has lingered long after the dissolution of the empire. It appeals to a generation that grew up believing narratives of the UK’s superiority, exposed to racist rhetoric as a facet of life.

The success of his party represents an uncomfortable truth for Britain: it represents the salience of an antiquated belief system which hierarchises race, resting on the assumption of British superiority and exceptionalism. It is inherently rooted in our colonial past and the ideologies that supported it. The narrative is dual: that ‘outsiders’ represent an inherent threat to our culture, our way of life, our values, and that there is a superiority to our way of life, culture and values.

This is not only an issue of immigration, but an issue of systemic racism.

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