Inquiry - Outrage - Move On

Britain's scandals are coming so thick and fast that we are too quickly forgetting them

Towering Columns

For The Spectator, Ross Clark questions whether the Covid Inquiry has asked most important questions.

The inquiry has made good theatre, but has failed to answer the questions which most needed to be asked. What we should have had is an inquiry led by scientists (not those who had been involved in advising the government, obviously) which asked the real pertinent scientific questions which might help prevent a future pandemic or given us a more reasoned response – rather like the air disaster investigations which have steadily made air travel one of the safest forms of transport there is. The inquiry has at least asked whether lockdowns were worth it – even if the answers are unsatisfactory. But these are the issues which still need to be addressed, and which it doesn’t look as if Baroness Hallet and her team are going to bother with.

Where did the virus come from? This should have been at the heart of the inquiry and yet has been brushed aside. When Michael Gove (now editor of this magazine) raised the issue in the inquiry the response of the KC was that didn’t want to get into that. Why on Earth not? If the virus came from mixing of animals in a live market, we need to know so that the world can handle animals differently in future. If, as many now feel is more likely, it originated in a lab leak of a virus created in ‘gain-of-function’ research, that would have serious implications for the conduct of such research in future – including the question of whether it should even be allowed. It would be the most expensive accident in history.

Why was so much faith put into modelling which turned out to be wrong? Lady Hallet made the claim that 23,000 lives could have been saved had lockdown been imposed a week earlier in March 2020. She treated this – which came from Professor Neil Ferguson and his Imperial College team – as scientific fact rather than speculative and contentious modelling that it was. We can never know what would have happened had lockdown been introduced a week earlier, but when Imperial College’s modelling was able to be measured against reality, it was found wanting. In December 2021, Fergusson’s team modelled what would happen if the then new omicron variant was allowed to run through the population without a fourth lockdown, or similar such measures. Its worst-case scenario was 5,000 deaths a day in January 2022. But no lockdown was called – and there was no big wave of deaths. How much should we rely on modelling, and can it be improved? That is a question Baroness Hallett has ducked entirely.

In The Times, Juliet Samuel says Shabana Mahmood’s asylum plan will not be enough to secure Britain’s borders.

Mahmood is also promising to change how our courts apply Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the provision on “private and family life” whose purpose was to stop states spying on their own citizens but which is now used to argue that an asylum seeker who has spent years appealing against deportation should get to stay because he has a close bond with his ex who kicked him out last year. This sort of reform has been tried before, in the 2014 Immigration Act and in the Nationality and Borders Act of 2022 (the latter, naturally, opposed by Labour). Each time the new law makes a bit of headway and then asylum tribunals and courts go back to inventing new rights that expand upon Strasbourg case law, making the problem even worse.

So it will be with any new legislation Mahmood manages to pass (and based on abortive welfare reform, passing it is not a given). The same thing will happen with her attempt to allow for only narrow exemptions (the word “exception” appears five times in 25 pages). “Exceptional” protections designed for children or “the vulnerable” will be quickly expanded and applied to people with “anxiety” or “trauma”, to parents, grandparents and so on. This is because nothing Mahmood is proposing will change the defective “human rights” legal culture that got us into this mess.

Despite these huge risks to her plan, the home secretary nonetheless finds it necessary to give a sop to the inverse utopianists who dominate her party in the form of more “safe legal routes” into Britain for the world’s refugees. She’s proposing to invent three new ways to claim asylum, which she claims will be strictly capped and introduced slowly. Does anyone want to predict how that is going to go? Even before ministers have shored up the castle walls, they’re thinking of ways to blast new holes in them. At the heart of Mahmood’s attempt to fix the problem of illegal migration is an unresolvable lie, repeated several times throughout her policy document because it’s what Labour lawyers need to hear: “The UK will always remain a place where those who are truly fleeing danger can find safety.” The problem is that it won’t — it can’t — because there are simply too many needy people in the world for Britain to take in.

And in The Critic, Chris Bayliss says her plan will simply formalise existing illegal access routes.

The government’s proposals split out asylum seekers into two categories — “core protection’” and “work and study”. Those who remain in core protection will face a far longer wait of 20 years before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and will face rolling re-assessments every 30 months as to whether their home country and circumstances mean that they are still eligible for asylum. However, the government makes it clear that it will expect most refugees to opt into the work and study track, under which they will be eligible to apply for ILR after the same waiting period of 10 years as a regular migrant, and will be free to work and study as the name suggests. They will also be entitled to apply for family reunion visas.

As any fool can see, this regularises and formalises the existing settlement, under which arriving illegally in the UK and seeking asylum is the most straightforward way into Britain for those who lack the skills or credentials to find sponsorship or obtain a visa. Furthermore, such arrivals will still be able to obtain British nationality for themselves and their descendents for all and ever after, and will become just as British and you or me.

Additionally, she has announced provisions for “safe and legal routes” for refugees wishing to apply for asylum without landing in the country illegally, including a community sponsorship pathway, a route for skilled refugees, and a pathway for students who have become “displaced” during the course of their studies. But as ever, the rubber dinghy option is still available for all of those who do not pass muster via one or the other of these channels, and following that, the “work and study” track, and ILR after ten years.

On his Substack, Rory Hanrahan says removing illegal migrants will not stop home-grown sectarian politics.

George Galloway did not win Rochdale because a few hundred Albanian criminals rioted outside a Holiday Inn in Manchester. He won because enough British-born Muslim voters decided that Gaza mattered more than bin collections, more than schools, more than anything happening on their own streets – and that a sectarian firebrand was the best vehicle for their anger. The same pattern now holds or threatens to hold in Blackburn, Bradford, Dewsbury, Oldham, Birmingham Perry Barr, Leicester South, and twenty-odd other seats where demographic weight guarantees that imported grievances can out-muscle domestic ones. Yesterday’s crackdown will, at best, deport a few hundred foreign-born offenders who were stupid enough to get caught on camera throwing bricks or chanting the wrong slogan. It will do precisely nothing about the tens of thousands of British-passported citizens who share their worldview and vote accordingly. Lifetime visa bans are all very well when the people you’re trying to deter already have a British passport, were born in the NHS, and have no intention of ever leaving.

This is the sepsis I warned about in the Spectator last month: once politics becomes a census of identity rather than a contest of ideas, moderation dies. Northern Ireland proved it. Lebanon proved it. The Balkans proved it. Large parts of the West Midlands and West Yorkshire are now proving it. Labour’s package is tough theatre, but it is still theatre. Real prevention would mean asking why so many second- and third-generation immigrants vote for candidates who openly despise the country that educated them, housed them, and gave them the vote. It would mean admitting that multiculturalism without integration is just slow-motion partition. It would mean confronting the voting blocs rather than just the rioters on the fringes of those blocs. None of that is on the table. Instead we get the comforting ritual of deportation flights and tougher rhetoric – the modern equivalent of internment without trial. It feels decisive. It changes nothing fundamental.

My father spent years trying to kill British soldiers because he believed the cause was bigger than any one man. He spent the rest of his life trying to stop younger men making the same evil mistake. He learned the hard way that you don’t cure tribal politics by removing a few extremists; you cure it by making tribal politics electorally suicidal. Until a British government is prepared to say that – out loud, without apology, and without fear of the human-rights industry – yesterday’s announcements are just another dose of antibiotics for a cancer that has already metastasised. Raise a pint to the moderates. There are fewer of them every year.

In the Financial Times, Janan Ganesh says Labour were always going to be this bad - and will only get worse.

What can be said [Rachel Reeves’s] her defence? That she is braver than her leader. There were warnings about Starmer’s character in opposition. He let others stand up to Jeremy Corbyn, whom he served in shadow cabinet. He let others fight woke dogma, until the tide turned against it. Even now, he makes liberal use of human shields. Notice that every crisis for Starmer quickly becomes a conversation about his underlings. His then chief of staff Sue Gray used to be the problem. Now it is her successor Morgan McSweeney. What rotten luck the prime minister has with recruitment. The British are having to relearn a lesson that Theresa May should have fixed in their minds forever. Don’t assume that uncharismatic people have hidden depths. Being boring does not make someone a “technocrat”. One can be dull and inept.

If Starmer is both, how can things get worse? Look at his challengers.

This is how the coming years are likely to play out. Whenever Starmer is in trouble, Andy Burnham will say something nebulously crowd-pleasing and flash those sad eyes at Labour members. (A part of me wants the Greater Manchester mayor to become prime minister, just to see him run a national budget.) Angela Rayner will offer a similar northern-left alternative. Both have prestige in a middle-class and southern party that is touchy about its estrangement from the industrial regions. To survive this dissent, Starmer will tilt left. Or the left will topple him. Even if a relative right-ist such as Wes Streeting or Shabana Mahmood becomes leader, the internal logic of this government is now towards more fiscal concessions and less public sector reform, barring a 1976-style shock in which markets force Labour’s hand. The central event of the government so far was Starmer’s retreat from welfare reform last summer. It established the precedent that backbenchers and grassroots can morally blackmail him.

Look at their influence. As unemployment rises, a sensible prime minister would ditch his plans for more red tape on hiring. But he can’t, in case the unions ditch him. In a stagnant economy, the government should pursue growth at all costs. The priority of its MPs is to increase child benefit claims. All of this and more was foreseeable. Starmer exorcised the hard left but the soft left are more numerous and not much less deluded. If you trusted these people to unleash Britain’s economic potential, I don’t know what to say to you.

For UnHerd, Jonathan Sumption relays the history of English free speech, and itemises its legitimate exceptions.

Let’s start with the legal restrictions which I suggest we should accept. The Online Safety Act, which was passed in 2023, is a complex and in some ways clumsily drafted piece of legislation, which hits many targets that were not intended. However, its principal purpose is to require providers of online content to have age verification checks so as to control access by children to manipulative or corrupting material such as pornography or material advocating suicide or self-harm. I have pointed out that the concept of freedom of expression involves treating adults as capable of discernment and of intelligently ordering their lives. The same assumptions cannot apply to children, who are by definition in a state of developing but incomplete maturity, and who do not have the full range of liberties available to adults. It is fair to regard the manipulation of children’s sensibilities as closely analogous to the coercion from which we seek to protect adults.

Next, there are laws which regulate the way in which our right of free speech is exercised, rather than the content of our speech. These too are, in principle, acceptable. For example, you cannot picket abortion clinics within 150 metres of their doors or buy advertising time for political causes on television. The law restricts the picketing of abortion clinics because it harasses women at an emotionally difficult time of their lives, but you can still protest against abortion in ways that do not amount to harassment: you can stand with your placards 160 metres away, demonstrate in Trafalgar Square, write articles in the press, publish podcasts on YouTube, distribute leaflets, and so on. The law forbids political advertising on television in order to provide some limit on the power of big money to buy influence over political debate in a democracy. However, you can still do party political broadcasts, put up posters on billboards, take advertising space in newspapers, or hold political rallies. These restrictions are not directed against the content of any spoken or written statement. There is no infringement of the right to freedom of expression simply because there are some places where you cannot speak. A notice saying “Silence” in a courtroom, church or library is not an infringement of free speech.

My final example is more controversial. It is about the laws relating to defamation and privacy. The law of libel and slander allows people to claim damages from those who have told lies about them. The law of privacy allows those whose privacy has been invaded without any justification in the public interest to claim damages from the intruder. There are legitimate concerns about the granting of injunctions, especially in privacy cases, but I see no reason why the law should not, after proper investigation, correct the financial consequences of lies and intrusions into our private lives by awarding compensation for the damage which these things can cause. I do not regard that as censorship. It simply adjusts as between private individuals the financial consequences of free speech…

Wonky Thinking

Civitas and the Classical Liberal Education Network (CLEN) published Renewing Classical Liberal Education: What it is and its history. Authors Briar Lipson and Daniel Dieppe show how and why, despite significant progress over the past 15 years, children are still cheated by a reductive “teaching to the test” approach to schooling instead of exploring deeper questions about human flourishing.

Classical liberal education is the grounding of a child into a lifelong adventure through ideas and ideals, that they might enter, through the gradual cultivation of wisdom, style and virtue, into the fullness of humanity, ‘the good life’ as we might call it.

The tradition through which Western civilisation preserved and enriched its inheritance for 2,500 years, this education for freedom develops a person’s conscience, so that she might judge beauty and truthfulness, discern what is right and just, make the wise choice when it is not obvious.

However, three developments in culture have eroded the kind of schooling designed for personal freedom and conscience. These are:

• The advance of scientific materialism which, while necessary to science’s empirical and measurable definition of truth, now increasingly displaces humane study (the original purpose of the humanities).

• The rejection of past authorities.

• The provision of mass education by the state with implications for, amongst other things, teacher-student relationships, accountability, and the purpose ascribed to schooling.

Today, the consequences of these developments are so expansive that it is widely assumed by educators, policymakers and parents, and even more widely communicated to children, that the purpose of schooling is preparation for work; schools exist now to boost incomes and gross domestic product (GDP).

Since 2010, approaches to schooling that de-emphasised past authorities have been directly challenged and undermined in England by an evidence and knowledge-rich revolution. Relatedly, in reading, science and maths, England’s 15-year-olds now outperform their peers in almost all other Western countries. This is a meaningful achievement. It could herald the renewal of classical liberal education. Yet so far, unmoored from their rich tradition and rowing in siloed isolation against the tide of scientific materialist, statist and utilitarian ideas, the ability of even the most forthright liberal educators to re-orient schooling has been limited. It is still perfectly possible to pass through school, including with flying colours, having never picked up a work of classical literature, having never considered the nature of truth, without the basics of Western chronology, with not one line of poetry committed to memory. Modern schooling has become a gateway to riches but not our full humanity.

This report charts the history of classical liberal education, of its rise and fall, and what has now replaced it. Next will come a collection of case studies about bastions and green shoots of liberal learning, as well as recommendations for parents, educators and policymakers, for the renewal of classical liberal education in the UK, for the humane benefit of all.

For Onward, Chris Worrall models the impact of mass migration on UK housing costs in Denmark’s Dagger: Zero inflows to piece the housing heartache. He forecasts a cumulative +2-3% impact on prices due to immigration levels between now and 2029.

This report provides a comprehensive, forward-looking assessment of how net migration levels will influence house prices and rents in England and Wales (E&W) through the 2025–2029 parliamentary term. Drawing on global and UK peer-reviewed research, it models two scenarios: a high-migration case (≥400,000 UK net annually, skewed low-skilled with real income drags from energy costs and net-zero policies) and a zero-net-migration case (Denmark-style, with productivity gains from reindustrialization and cheaper energy).

Key assumptions incorporate September 2025 data: E&W dwelling stock 27.3 million (up from 27.1 million mid-2024, with 201,000 completions to Q2 2025); net migration year-ending June 2025 at 250,000 (down from 2023 peaks); natural population change mildly positive early but declining to negative by 2029 per ONS projections; annual supply growth at 0.8%. Income effects are factored via elasticities (0.6 median), with high migration depressing wages -0.5% annually and real incomes -1% (energy cap at £1,755/year, 50% above pre-crisis); zero migration boosting real incomes +1% via +0.5% productivity and energy relief.

Results: High migration yields +2.0–3.0% cumulative price rise and +1.7–2.5% rents (modest due to supply and drags); zero migration -1.0–1.8% prices and -0.8–1.5% rents (cushioned by income gains). Supply constraints amplify urban pressures. Policy must balance migration with housing delivery to mitigate affordability risks, leveraging reindustrialization for sustainable growth.

1) Introduction

The UK’s housing market faces persistent affordability challenges, exacerbated by population dynamics and supply inelasticity. As of September 2025, E&W house prices stand at £290,000 average (up 2.5% year-on-year), while rents have surged 7.8% to £1,235/month, outpacing wage growth at 4.2%. Net migration, which accounted for 90% of UK population growth in 2024, remains a pivotal driver – year-ending June 2025 net at 250,000, down from 745,000 in 2023 but still above historical norms due to student and work visas.

This research synthesizes peer-reviewed evidence to project impacts through 2029 under constrained supply (0.8% annual net additions). It contrasts a continuation of high migration (≥400,000 net, per government baselines) with a restrictive Denmark-style zero-net target, overlaying current trends like declining natural change and income effects from energy prices/productivity.

Forward projections are critical: ONS estimates UK population reaching 70 million by 2026, driven by migration amid natural stagnation. Without intervention, imbalances could widen inequality, with low-income renters hit hardest. This analysis employs causal elasticities from studies like Saiz (2007) and MAC (2018), adjusted for UK specifics, to deliver actionable insights for policymakers and investors.

2) Literature Review: Global and UK Evidence on Immigration, Incomes, and Housing

Peer-reviewed research underscores immigration’s demand-side pressure on housing, modulated by incomes and supply. Globally, a 1% population increase from immigration raises rents 0.6-1.2% and prices 1-2% (Saiz 2007, Journal of Urban Economics; Ottaviano & Peri 2007, Journal of the European Economic Association), with effects 2-3x larger in inelastic markets (e.g. UK’s planning constraints, supply elasticity 0.5-0.7 vs. US 1.5).

US studies highlight short-term spikes fading via native mobility: Monras (2020, American Economic Review) finds low-skilled inflows reduce rents 0.5-1% long-run due to out-migration, but +1% short-run. Research on “white flight” – the out-migration of white residents in response to non-white immigration – further explains these dynamics. Boustan (2010) estimates that white flight accounted for about 20% of postwar suburbanization in US cities during the ‘Black Great Migration’, redistributing demand and mitigating urban housing pressures.

More recently, Pan (2024) documents similar patterns of white families leaving affluent California suburbs as Asian immigrants arrived, linked to school competition, which stabilizes local prices through reduced net demand. These mobility patterns contribute to persistent segregated housing, where ethnic enclaves form and influence rents and values over time.

For instance, Saiz and Wachter (2011) analyse how Hispanic immigration growth led to increased segregation in US metro areas from 1970 to 2000, resulting in divergent price trajectories: rising values in white suburbs (+5-10% premium) and slower rent growth in immigrant-heavy neighbourhoods (0.5-1% annual dampening), perpetuating affordability gaps across racial lines.

Canada and Australia show stronger persistence: Akbari & Aydede (2012, Regional Science and Urban Economics) estimate 0.8-1.2% price rises per 1% inflow in Toronto/Vancouver, driven by high-skilled immigrants; Stillman & Maré (2008, Economic Record) 0.9-1.1% in Sydney, amplified by urban concentration. European evidence aligns: Sanchis-Guarner (2017, LSE) reports 3.3% price and 1% rent increases per 1pp immigration rate in Spain, with +24% indirect amplification from native co-location. Gonzalez & Ortega (2013, Journal of Urban Economics) confirm 2% short-term prices in Spain; Mussa et al. (2017, Switzerland) null overall but +0.5% in high-flow areas.

UK-specific: MAC (2018) attributes 1% national price rise per 1pp population growth, 2-3x in the South East; Whitehead et al. (2011) links 20-30% of 1990s-2000s growth to migration. Sá (2015, Economic Journal) finds local -1.6% prices per 1% low-skilled inflow due to high-income native flight (0.85% outflow), but national net positive. Meta-analyses (Card 2009) affirm median 1% elasticity, higher for rents (quicker adjustment).

Shor-term spikes happen after an influx of immigrants (especially lower skilled workers) move into a city or neighbourhood; housing demand shoots up fast. More people mean more competition for rentals or homes, so prices and rents jump quickly. The reason natives (long-time residents) often pack up and move to nearby cheaper areas. This “out-migration” frees up housing supply, balancing things out and cooling price and rental growth. The initial jump does not last forever, as it eases off over time.

In short, immigration causes a quick housing squeeze, but locals relocating to avoid the crunch eventually spreads out the pressure. This makes things more affordable again, but at what cost. It is like a crowded party, new guests arrive and it is packed, but some of the old-timers slip out the back door, so everyone gets more space.

Incomes refine this: Housing demand elasticity 0.5-1.0 to income (DiPasquale & Wheaton 1996, Journal of Urban Economics). Immigration’s wage effects: -0.5–2% for low-skilled natives short-term (Dustmann et al. 2013, UK; Monras 2015, US) – dampen via reduced affordability, stabilising rent-to-income ratios (Card 2005, Journal of Economic Literature).

In layman, immigration adds demand pressure by hurting low-skilled natives’ wallets (through higher housing costs), which leaves them with less to spend on housing. Perversely, it statistically takes the edge off the affordability crunch. It is not a fix. Prices still rise a bit, but it in effect prevents overheating. A native squeeze for market ease. But over time, say 3-5 years, people adjust (better jobs or moving to cheaper locations), and things balance out.

If wages rose instead (from skilled immigration), it would still turn housing into a bidding war where low-skilled natives would lose ground the fastest. They would end up renting worse places further out, commuting longer, all the while feeling the pinch. Skilled immigration might supercharge the economy through improved GDP, but it comes with costs if policymakers do not build more homes fast. Otherwise, it is a rough ride for those at the bottom.

Yet although skilled immigration may exacerbate housing pressures for low-skilled natives – sparking a bidding war that pushes them to distant, subpar rentals and longer commutes – research shows it does not stoke anti-immigrant attitudes. Instead, it cools nationalist voting intention by 0.34 standard deviations per 3.1% population rise, namely through economic optimism. This is in stark contrast with low-skilled inflows that ignite fears over jobs and welfare, amplifying it by 0.73 standard deviations per 6.1% rise (Moriconi et al. 2019).

Skill complementarities refer to the economic synergy where immigrants’ skills – particularly high skilled ones like engineers or managers – complement rather than compete with native workers. It allows low-skilled natives to specialise in routine or manual tasks while immigrants drive innovation and oversight, ultimately lifting overall wages and productivity across the labour market. This dynamic, as detailed in Peri and Sparber’s 2009 study in the Review of Economics and Statistics, generates modest but positive wage gains of 0.2-0.5% for natives through task reallocation, with no significant displacement for low-skilled groups.

Similarly, Lewis & Peri 2015 handbook chapter quantifies productivity boosts of +1-2% from such inflows, as immigrants fill knowledge gaps that expand firm output and create spillover jobs. However, these benefits can be muted by countervailing fiscal drags, such as increased taxes to fund public services for newcomers (some of which never become net contributors), or external shocks like energy price hikes that erode real incomes by -0.5-1%, which mute demand elasticity through curbed household spending power.

On the other hand, homeownership acts as a natural hedge, converting price appreciation into wealth effects equivalent to 6–8% of rental income (Ottaviano & Peri, 2007). This enables homeowners to offset affordability strains through equity extraction or psychological resilience, though this exacerbates intergenerational dives as renters – often low-skilled natives – bear the brunt without such buffers.

Recent UK trends: Post-Brexit, low-skilled skew depresses semi-skilled wages -0.5% (Dustmann et al.); net-zero policies add between £500-£800/capita tax burden, hitting real incomes amid 50% higher energy costs. Reindustrialization could boost productivity +0.5–1% (NIESR 2025), echoing Denmark’s wage stability under tight controls.

Synthesis: Base 1% elasticity adjusted +20-50% for constraints, -25-50% for wage drags. This informs scenario modelling, emphasizing targeted migration for balanced growth.

Podcast of the Week

On The Brink podcast, Nick Timothy MP says growing Islamist extremism is going unchallenged in Britain.

Quick Links

The first report of the Covid Inquiry found the government did “too little, too late”, but also that faster action on the border and testing could have averted lockdowns altogether.

The former leader of Reform UK in Wales, Nathan Gill, was sentenced to over 10 years in prison for spreading Russian propaganda for cash.

Inflation fell from 3.8% to 3.6%.

The UK will abolish its “de minimis” rule for cheap imports.

The Chancellor accused her critics of “mansplaining”.

Foreign national offenders in UK prisons cost the taxpayer £643 million a year, a report found - up 51% on 2019.

China’s investment in companies and infrastructure has given it access to military-grade UK technology, an investigation found.

ExxonMobil announced the closure of its plastics refinery at Mossmorran, meaning 400 job losses and the UK no longer manufacturing ethylene for the first time.

Average UK taxpayers pay much less income tax than in comparable economies while taxes on higher earners are among the steepest, making Britain the most progressive tax system in the developed world.

The Supreme Court found Christian-only Religious Education in Northern Ireland to be in breach of human rights laws.

Oxford and Cambridge were found to be on a list of 7 institutions to have links with China’s top defence universities.

Most voters say they would actively vote against either Labour or Reform, depending on their previous voting history.

Kensington and Chelsea Council seized 1,000 dangerously parked or dumped e-bikes.

An Afghan national admitted raping a 12 year-old girl.

Despite Britain’s fiscal crunch, Labour MPs wrote to the Chancellor demanding more spending on foreign aid.