Thinktank concludes concern about immigration actually about something else

Concern about immigration is actually about something other than immigration, concludes a report issued by a prestigious liberal think-tank.

The Society for Monitoring Underclass Grunts (SMUG), an offshoot of the Fabian Society, has published "Misguided and Misled: How popular concerns about immigration are actually concerns about things we happen to disagree with".

Lead author, Sir Gus Lighter, a retired Whitehall senior civil servant, spoke at the launch at Milbank on Tuesday afternoon.

"People are being hoodwinked into opposition to immigration when the real problem is GB News, the Daily Mail and Elon Musk".

Sir Gus explained that the 384-page report had examined every commonly expressed concern about immigration and discovered that none of them were actually about immigration.

“When they mention pressure on public services, they are concerned about fourteen years of Tory austerity. When they mention crime, they are concerned about cuts to youth clubs. And when they specifically say, ‘No, I really do mean the number of people coming into the country’, that generally indicates a frustration with the slow progress towards decarbonisation of our economy"

Among the report's key claims were that concern about illegal migration was actually concern about the lack of safe and legal routes. The concern about legal migration however was actually a concern about inadequate infrastructure. Opposition to fast cultural change was usually caused by the closure of bus routes.

Sir Gus said researchers had found “no credible evidence for the hypothesis that concern about immigration could actually relate to immigration”.

Housing concerns unfounded

Labour MP, Anne Tagonist, whose constituency of Hackney and Islington has a council housing shortlist of 150,000 also told the audience, which was 97% white and over 95% over 50 years old:

“Housing demand isn't caused by people wanting houses. It is caused by systemic underinvestment, Tory austerity and greedy landlords. More people merely increases the number of people experiencing the shortage.”

Anne Tagonist MP compared people discussing the impact of migration on housing to the conspiracy theorists behind the supply side theories of the housing crisis.

“The suggestion that adding several million people to a country might increase demand for a finite stock of houses sounds superficially plausible. This is precisely what makes this kind of misinformation so dangerous.”

Support for the study also came from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Anne Arkist who said that the correlation between rising migration and rising crime was just that. She added that it was ludicrous as well as xenophobic to suggest that young traumatised men from war-torn countries and no marketable skills could possibly be more likely to drift into crime.

Participants asked what others thought

SMUG researchers conducted 14 focus groups across Islington, Camden, Brighton and Oxford, involving 126 participants who did not personally hold concerns about immigration.

The participants were instead asked to explain why people in Doncaster did.

Researchers said this methodology avoided the “distorting effects” which can arise when studies of anti-immigration attitudes involve asking people who actually hold them.

Sir Gus rejected suggestions that the researchers should simply ask immigration sceptics what concerned them.

“There are considerable methodological problems with asking people what they think and then simply believing their answers.

Commoners frequently lack the educational vocabulary to identify the actual problems seeping beneath their prejudices. That's why institutions like ours exist.

This doesn't mean these people's concerns aren't valid. Their concerns are absolutely valid. They're simply wrong about what their concerns are.”

The report acknowledges that when asked directly, large numbers of voters continue to insist that immigration itself concerns them.

However, researchers warn against interpreting this as evidence that large numbers of voters are concerned about immigration.

“That would be an extremely simplistic reading of the data,” Sir Gus explained.

The OMS spoke to Darren Holt, a 47-year-old electrician from Peterborough, who said he remained unconvinced by the findings.

“I'm not angry about Elon Musk. I've never been on Twitter. I just think immigration is too high.”

When his comments were put to Sir Gus, he said they provided a useful illustration of the problem identified by the report.

“Exactly. Darren clearly feels economically insecure, socially alienated and excluded from Britain's increasingly complex multicultural economy.”

Contacted again by the OMS, Darren responded bluntly “No. I just think immigration is too high.”

Sir Gus described the response as “a textbook example of how deeply the misinformation has penetrated. Dave seems a lovely chap but he ought to stop watching GB News and get a university education".

SMUG has received £4.7 million of government funding to conduct a three-year follow-up study into why voters increasingly feel that nobody listens to them.