Brexit leader Nigel Farage kicked off his surprise political campaign by demanding “zero net migration,” a move that aims to cannibalize the governing Conservative Party’s vote. Immigration remains one of the hottest topics in British politics, with over one million visas issued in the United Kingdom just last year.
The comments were made in Clacton, where Farage seeks a parliamentary seat. Clacton voted in a UK Independence Party (UKIP) Member of Parliament in 2015, though a Conservative Party MP currently represents it.
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Zero net migration would entail balancing the number of annual immigrants against the expected number of emigrants—508,000 people in the year to June 2023, of whom 93,000 were British nationals. The policy completely outflanks the Conservatives, who attempted to burnish their poor anti-mass migration credentials by announcing an unspecified, annually changing cap on total visas the same day.
“We cannot go on as we are. We have to limit numbers. Our lives, our quality of life in this country, is being diminished by the population explosion, and if that means that in some sectors there would be