Matt Goodwin: Get ready for Brexit 2

What the reaction to Reform’s policy reveals about the country

One key lesson from the Brexit years is that the ruling class who claim to speak for the British people do not really understand the people at all.

This is why, at the 2019 general election, the ruling class found itself completely outflanked and overturned by an electorate that had simply had enough of its ongoing efforts to dilute, block, and overturn their democratic vote for Brexit.

Once the sheer power of popular sovereignty was mobilised against a remote elite along the lines of an issue, Brexit, that cut across the traditional ‘left versus right’ divide, the contest was not even close. The people won, easily. At the 2019 general election, the forgotten majority comprehensively defeated the elite class.

Which is what, I think, we are about to witness all over again, only this time the cross-cutting issue that unites the forgotten majority in this country will not be the call to leave the European Union; it will be the call to end mass uncontrolled immigration.

Just look at the utterly deranged, bizarre, and hysterical reaction among the ruling class to Nigel Farage’s and Reform’s latest policy announcement on immigration, which is remarkably similar to their equally unhinged reaction to the vote for Brexit.

This week, Nigel Farage and Reform said something that the vast majority of people on these islands will hear as being entirely reasonable and understandable.

They will overturn the widely unpopular ‘Boriswave’, a policy that saw, with no democratic mandate whatsoever, Boris Johnson and the Tories import millions of economically costly low-wage, low-skill and non-European migrants from radically different cultures into Britain and then give them the right to remain indefinitely.

This policy makes zero economic sense (see here and here). Not even one in five of the people Boris Johnson brought into the country came on skilled worker visas. The rest, more than 80 per cent, are the relatives of workers, international students who often moved into low-skill jobs, and refugees, subsidised by the British people. Only about 2-3% of all visas issued went to doctors and highly trained workers in the NHS.

Reform have pledged to not only overturn this disastrous policy and sharply reduce overall levels of legal migration into Britain but also ensure that any migrants who come in the future will have to apply for five-year renewable visas, speak English fluently, make a net contribution to the economy, have a clean criminal record, and work, rather than relying on welfare benefits and social housing.

At the same time, welfare benefits and social housing will be restricted to British nationals while companies that do need migrant workers will be forced to also invest in training up British people, such as the one million young British people who are currently not in education, employment, or training.

Now enter the ruling class, which over the last 24 hours has responded to this entirely reasonable policy by having what can only be described as a nervous breakdown.

Despite this policy being pursued by many other countries around the world, here in Britain our ruling class has radicalised to such an extent that it now views any opposition to mass migration as tantamount to the resurrection of the Third Reich.

Andrew Marr, the same man who assured us after Keir Starmer’s election victory, last year, that “the adults are back in the room”, wonders if the policy could lead to “blood on the streets”. Seriously. So-called ‘conservative’ Iain Dale wonders where the British sense of “fairness” has gone. London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan says the policy is ‘unacceptable’, while John Crace, in the Guardian, says it is ‘economically illiterate’.

The New Statesman, meanwhile, talks of Farage’s ‘immigration extremism’. The Times claims the policy is “half-baked”. And Keir Starmer is reportedly preparing a major speech to warn about, you guessed it, “the far-right”.

The members of the ruling class, in other words, the people who control many of the key institutions in our society, are once again demonstrating to the rest of the country how utterly out-of-touch and adrift they really are, much like they did after Brexit.

A reminder. The British people, out there in the country, have never been as strongly concerned and sceptical about mass immigration as they are today. Consistently, reliable pollsters find large majorities want what the ruling class refuse to give them. Lower immigration. Control over their borders. A country they recognise.

Not even one in five think immigration has been ‘mostly good’ for Britain. Close to three-quarters, a record in modern polling, say immigration’s been ‘too high’. The zeitgeist, the mood, in other words, has turned firmly against mass immigration.

Which is why the people have sent Reform to the top of the polls. Such is the intensity of feeling about immigration that the people are prepared to burn down a two-party system that has governed this country for a century so they can change course on this issue.

And the policy Reform is offering is not extreme at all. It is the approach taken by countless other countries around the globe, from Switzerland and Japan to the United Arab Emirates.

Countless other countries would look at Reform’s proposals and shrug their shoulders. Only in Britain would the ruling class conclude that ensuring migrants speak the national language, make a net financial contribution, and do not commit crime is somehow equivalent to entering the political abyss.

Most other countries do not hand out billions in welfare benefits to foreign nationals. Most other countries do not prioritise foreign nationals in social housing. And most other countries do not force their own people to subsidise millions of low-wage migrant workers from radically different cultures. Only in Britain do politicians do this and then call their own people “far-right extremists” when they ask questions.

What about that British sense of fairness, they ask? Well, indeed. Where is fairness when the UK government, the UK state, is using the British people’s own money to outbid the British people in their own housing market to favour migrants?

Where is fairness when the UK state is forcing its own people to pay £12 billion a year in benefits for households with at least one foreign national in them —enough for 240,000 new nurses or police officers, 15 new hospitals, or 1,700 new schools?

The fringe minority, in other words, are not the people who are suggesting a radical overhaul of an immigration policy that is visibly broken; the fringe minority is the ruling class that is now insisting the British people maintain this rotten status-quo and continue paying billions in costs for an extreme policy they never asked for.

And what is the argument the ruling class plan to take to the country at the next general election, exactly? That the British people should stay quiet, keep subsidising low-skill migrant workers from the Third World, paying £10 billion a year in welfare for people who are not British, another £6 billion subsidising social housing for foreign nationals, ignore the 1 million people in our country who do not speak English, and just go along with a policy that even major experts say makes no sense?

Is that the plan, here? And if the ruling class really think it is “fascist” or “far-right” to demand migrants should be able to speak English fluently, have a clean criminal record, make a net contribution to the economy, and work rather than rely on the welfare state then I would urge them to get outside London and try these arguments on the people of Wigan, Halifax, or Sunderland, where I was speaking last week.

Because what I see happening out there, clearly, is mass immigration becoming the new Brexit –a new fault line separating a ruling class who support a policy they and their friends have largely benefitted from, and a much larger number of people who have been forced to live with the dire effects of this policy.

Only, this time the split will not be 52-48, like it was with Brexit. It will be more like 80-20. Pretty much everything Farage is currently saying –end mass immigration, prioritise people who contribute, force migrants to speak the national language, reserve housing for British families, restrict benefits for British people—is popular.

And so, what will end up happening, if the ruling class remains on this course, is what we saw after Brexit, in 2019. The people, once again, outflanking a distant and out-of-touch elite in London, Oxford, Cambridge, and Brighton, handing Farage a commanding majority drawn from the very same areas that handed Boris Johnson a commanding majority nearly a decade earlier.

It will be Alarm Clock Britain, the people who have to get up and work for a living, Middle England, coastal communities, Labour’s Red Wall, Wales, and the people of non-London England who will rally behind this policy, much like they rallied behind the only other major rejection of the liberal establishment —Brexit.

They will all mobilise en masse to ensure the misery of mass immigration, imposed by an alliance of London liberals and globalist corporations who have zero interest in looking after the national community, comes to an end.

Nigel Farage knows this. Zia Yusuf knows this. Reform knows this. I know this. You know this. The only people who don’t are the ones who claim to speak for the British people but who, once again, will soon discover they do not understand them at all …