Despite one of the steepest drops in net migration in recent British history, most of the public believes immigration is still rising. The disconnect is stark, data-driven—and politically consequential. It exposes how years of sensationalist reporting, fixation on small boats, and hostile political rhetoric have shaped public perception far more powerfully than facts.
The reality: immigration has fallen sharply
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), net migration to the UK has collapsed by more than two-thirds in just over two years. After peaking at a record 944,000 in the year to March 2023, net migration fell to 204,000 in the year ending June 2025—a level not seen since before the post-pandemic surge.
Other indicators show the same downward trend:
- Skilled worker visa applications fell by 36% in 2025
- Health and care worker applications dropped by 51%
- Overall net migration is now at its lowest level in half a decade
These are not marginal changes. They represent a dramatic tightening of the UK’s immigration system, driven by visa restrictions, higher salary thresholds, limits on dependants, and an increasingly hostile policy environment.
The perception: most voters think immigration is rising
Yet exclusive polling by More in Common shows that 67% of UK voters believe immigration has increased, despite the data showing the opposite. Among Reform voters, the misconception is even stronger:
- Four in five Reform voters think immigration has risen
- 63% believe it has increased significantly
This isn’t a minor misunderstanding—it is a wholesale failure of public information.
Even when presented with accurate figures, fewer than one in five voters credit the current Labour government for the decline, with a similar proportion attributing it to the previous Conservative administration. Facts, it seems, struggle to cut through a media environment primed for outrage rather than accuracy.
Small boats: the media obsession distorting reality
One major reason for the gap between reality and belief is the relentless focus on small boat crossings. In the year ending June 2025:
- 43,000 people arrived via small boats
- This was 38% higher than the previous year
- But still below the 46,000 peak in 2022
Crucially, those arriving by small boat made up less than 5% of all people coming to the UK in 2025.
Despite this, corporate media coverage overwhelmingly treats small boats as synonymous with immigration itself. Nightly news bulletins, front pages, and rolling headlines present a visual narrative of “invasion” that bears little relation to the statistical reality. The result is a public that believes borders are “out of control” even as migration numbers fall precipitously.
Polling reflects this distortion. 79% of voters say the government’s priority should be stopping small boats, while only 10% think reducing legal net migration should be the main focus—despite legal migration being where the actual numerical changes have occurred.
Confidence collapsing despite tougher policies
Ironically, the collapse in public confidence has happened alongside some of the harshest immigration proposals in decades. Since November, the government has floated or announced measures including:
- Waiting up to 20 years for refugees to gain citizenship
- Confiscation of assets from asylum seekers
- Restrictions on family reunion
- The power to return refugees if conditions in their home country “improve”
Despite this hardline turn, 74% of voters now say they have little or no confidence in the government’s handling of immigration—up from 70% last year. Confidence among 2024 Labour voters has fallen by a striking 17 percentage points.
As More in Common’s Luke Tryl put it, the government faces a growing “credibility gap on migration”. Numbers alone, he argues, are not enough to shift opinion once fear-based narratives have taken root.
The political cost of chasing the far right
Critics within Labour warn that mimicking the language and priorities of the right is backfiring. Kim Johnson MP has pointed to the real-world consequences: a sharp fall in work visas that risks deepening crises in health and social care, alongside a rise in racism fuelled by divisive rhetoric.
Rather than neutralising Reform, the strategy appears to be legitimising its worldview—one in which immigration is always rising, always threatening, and never sufficiently restricted, regardless of the evidence.
A manufactured crisis
What this moment reveals is not an immigration crisis, but a crisis of information. Corporate media outlets continue to frame immigration as permanently out of control, amplifying extreme voices while burying inconvenient data. Politicians then respond to those distorted perceptions, tightening policies further—only to find public trust eroding anyway.
Immigration is falling. Rapidly. But until the media stops feeding the public a steady diet of fear, and until political leaders stop validating that fear, a majority of voters will continue to believe a story that simply isn’t true.
