In the past five years, MPs’ attitudes in the House of Commons towards immigration have swung harder to the right than at almost any other time in the last century
Labour and Conservative MPs are speaking in a more hostile way about immigration than at almost any other time in the last century, the Guardian can reveal.
An unprecedented analysis of 100 years of parliamentary speeches has shown a sharp shift to the right on the issue – with the biggest swing from positive to negative attitudes coming in the past five years.
Experts warn that MPs from the two main parties have been trying to outdo each other over how tough they appear on asylum and immigration since the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said there was “a clear case in principle that what we’ve seen in the past couple of years is a historically unprecedented dual negative shift in sentiment on immigration”.
