“The country is like a tinderbox now,” according to Robert Jenrick, a prominent Conservative Party politician and potential future leader. Seven out of ten Britons agree, at least judging by a recent poll from The Economist. Not to be upstaged, Elon Musk’s AI Grok gave us the date of Aug. 5 for when things would boil over. And a few days later, indeed, there were perhaps 20 protests across the country against asylum-seekers housed in hotels. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]There was no widespread civil unrest. Total attendance at those demonstrations was in the low thousands. Yet there are still worrying signs about Britain’s direction, and how the political and media class are fueling xenophobia. Immigration has soared up the political agenda. By some measures it is now the most important issue for much of the electorate. It is the signature issue for Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, which has made major gains at the ballot box and has surged to the top of opinion polls. Farage may well be Prime Minister come the next general election, and worryingly, unveiled plans for mass deportations today. More conventional politicians are at a loss on how to respond to all of this. Jenrick has tried to outdo Farage with overtly ethno-nationalist rhetoric, appearing alongside far-right extremists at a recent demonstration, and saying that the U.K. remains too “divided” while citing the declining share of the white British population in some communities. But he is hardly alone. The Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, has falsely claimed that half of social housing in London was occupied by “foreigners.” Kemi Badenoch, the hapless leader of the Conservatives who herself did not move to the U.K. from Nigeria until her teenage years, has been unwilling or unable to make her position clear but has frequently spoken out against immigration.Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivered a highly-criticized speech months earlier about the risk of Britain becoming an “island of strangers,” using language that evoked the white nationalist Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech. Starmer also blamed the “open border policies” of the previous Conservative government in those remarks. Part of the issue is that the debate around immigration is not moored in reality. Politicians and the media have focused incessantly on the “small boats” carrying asylum-seekers who make the dangerous journey across the English Channel. That has fed a national perception that the U.K. has lost control of its borders, and at a local level, the crossings are a very visible and extended sign of policy failure as asylum-seekers are housed in hotels for extended periods. A recent YouGov poll suggests that nearly half of Britons think that irregular migrants are the majority, despite legal migration constituting more than 90% of the 3 million-plus who moved to the U.K. over the past four years.So where next? Net migration is falling fast—down more than half from its 2023 peak as the extraordinary post-pandemic surge recedes and the center-left Labour government pursues more restrictive measures. It will fall further. But—given the disconnect between the actual numbers and public perceptions—this may not help the Starmer government unless they can be seen to be addressing small boat arrivals.Pessimism is easy. Research and empirical evidence from across Europe suggests that chasing the far right is a disastrous and self-defeating strategy. So far, the U.K. experience has reinforced that. The message from both the government and the Conservatives appears to be: “Nigel Farage is right about immigration. Don’t vote for him.” The risk is that British politics goes the way of other large European countries like France, Germany, and Italy, where steadily more draconian policies and rhetoric have merely fed the flames of xenophobia and further boosted the political appeal of the extreme right.Fortunately, the U.K. is very different. By most measures, it is considerably more integrated, and genuinely racist and ethno-nationalist attitudes are much less deeply rooted—largely confined to a hard core of older reactionaries and a younger, and very vocal, but rather small minority of online racists. When the host of a popular podcast suggested that former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak couldn’t be English because “he’s a brown Hindu,” this was met with almost complete rejection among the general public. So what would a more positive agenda look like? Starmer, who says he “deeply regrets” the tone and language of his May speech, may be starting to realize that chasing Reform and Farage is a blind alley. Sounding more like Tony Blair—who combined a tough line on asylum seekers with liberal policies towards immigrants—he struck a positive note on the latter, saying “we’ve always benefited from the talent, resilience, and enterprise of people who came here.” Much more of this, said much much more consistently, is required. The government needs to trumpet the U.K.’s success in managing high levels of immigration, both economically and socially. We have yet to hear a Cabinet Minister point out that migrants now fill one in five jobs in the U.K.; that they are more likely to be employed and less likely to claim benefits. There is absolutely no inconsistency in making this argument while prioritizing the need to control our borders.Read More: How Britain Beat America at ImmigrationBut we are well beyond the point where simply explaining economic realities is enough. More important is the political and moral case. The government needs to argue that immigration, and its accompanying ethnic change, is something that Britain has both absorbed and benefited from over the last half-century. For most of us, that is our lived experience: the nature of British society today is such that much of the public have partners, relatives, friends, and co-workers of a different ethnic group, and for the vast majority of us our attachment both to this country and our fellow Britons is far more important than our ethnic identity. Ultimately, diversity should be our greatest strength, and it is that argument that anti-immigration zealots fear most.