Many people stayed at home or switched to Reform in protest at the big surge in legal migration. Reform had highlighted the numbers of illegals but like the other parties said little about the far bigger numbers of legal.

People were right in seeing difficulties from allowing so many visas to be granted. The country is short of homes, short of water and sewage pipes, short of electricity generation, short of GPs, short of school places. Inviting  in so many people is not fair on them without the homes and services they will need, nor fair on people already here facing high prices for homes and scarce services.

The Treasury backed by most parties and many MPs thought more inward migration welcome to fill poorly paid job vacancies and to add to growth of output. Very few MPs in the last Parliament were willing and able to argue we need higher out per head, not higher output from more low income jobs. It needs investment in more mechanical and digital backup to help people be more productive and to earn better wages.

Every extra migrant adds to the need for more infrastructure, more public service and more highly trained staff like doctors and teachers. So why cannot the parties see what people can see? Why can’t  there more concentration on the need to get numbers well down? Will more make the case for a higher wage higher productivity economy and stand up to interest groups that think the answer to their woes is more cheap Labour from abroad? A large increase in low pay migration means large increases in public spending to provide them with homes and services.

Many voters are angry that the U.K. government allowed inflation to hit 11%. That is part of the reason Conservatives lost so many votes as they were meant to be in charge.

The public also saw that Labour did not warn about the coming inflation to suggest any policies that might have prevented it. Their vote also fell.

The problem went unsolved because most MPs and all parties in the House said the Bank of England is independent, None  of them wanted to challenge let along change the inflationary policy the Bank of England followed. This was both under its own powers and more importantly through the main policy of printing too much money and buying too many bonds which government and Opposition both backed and approved.

There is still no party calling for an end to the sale of bonds in the market at huge losses. This policy is not followed by the European and US Central banks though they made the same big inflationary mistake as the Bank of England. All parties want a better financial outlook to afford more spending and or tax cuts yet none can see how the Bank is sending huge needless bills to taxpayers.

Why? inflation  in Japan, Switzerland and China stayed low despite the war and energy price surge.This shows it was not the war but Bank policy that caused the overall inflation. .

I read there is a debate amongst Conservative MPs over who to have as leader, which goes to the heart of what the Conservative Party should believe and advocate.There is also a debate over the leadership and structure of the Reform party with some wanting a democratic  Party constitution to be introduced.

The One Nation group of Conservatives thinks they lost because they did not move sufficiently in the Labour/ Lib Dem direction. They say the party needs to win back voters from Labour and Lib Dems by moving  closer to their preoccupations and ideas.They want to downplay migration, move closer to the EU, talk more about public services and uphold the European human rights law.

The more conservative minded group thinks they lost because many former Conservative voters either stayed at home or voted Reform. They want a new Conservative Party to have a credible offer of much lower migration, lower tax rates and a more focused state, using Brexit freedoms to promote global U.K.

To help them examine this choice it might be useful to analyse voting patterns in Wokingham, one of many seats that passed from Conservatives to Lib Dems  or Labour.

In 2024 the Conservative vote plunged by 13,336
The Labour vote fell by 2819 , a nearly identical percentage fall to the Conservative vote

The Lib Dem vote rose by 2392

The new Reform vote was 5274

So if you add Lib Dem and Labour their combined vote was slightly down. There was no net switch from Conservative to Lib/Lab. The most likely explanation of changes in their votes is more Labour voters switched to Lib Dem to defeat the Conservatives.

Even if you thought all 2392 extra Lib Dem votes came from Conservatives you still need to explain where the other 11,000 missing Conservative votes went. The most likely explanation for the 13,336 fewer Conservative votes is many of them voted for Reform with the larger number staying at home. This would marry with the national outcome.

The voting pattern means there are many voters who want a more identifiably conservative approach to borders, taxes, economic growth than the last government managed and than Labour is offering. They split between voting Conservative, voting Reform and abstaining. The new Conservative leader will be in a struggle with Reform over who can best represent this group. Both Conservatives and Reform also will be looking for a platform with wider appeal that is compatible with the core economic policy and border controls they need to unite this large group of conservative voters. Reform have added the Lib Dem policy of proportional representation to their offer which complicates their priorities.

The government has got off to a bad start over migration.
It sounds as if they will effectively grant an amnesty to the backlog of applicants who have already arrived illegally. They have scrapped the Rwanda plan which for all its troubles was putting some illegal migrants off coming to or staying in the U.K.

The strategy rests entirely on better enforcement. The previous government spent a lot money and effort on trying to get more collaboration from the French. They claimed a lot of boats were intercepted and gangs prosecuted, but such a lucrative trade produces more organisers. The French coast is long. Yet you would have thought they could intercept the buses that now take people to the boats. With drones and surveillance cameras they should get early sight of boats getting ready to make an illegal run.

Following the money should help as banks are charged with watching out for money laundering. How do they pay for the boats? Why not respond to more of the adverts for the trips?

They need to ask why so many want to come to England? Why is England seen as offering a much better deal than France?

They also need to understand that current levels of legal migration place far too much pressure on housing and public services. They need to tighten the qualifications further compared to the January policy changes.

Bizarre that the U.K. hosted the meeting of 46 leaders of European countries at Blenheim. That great British victory against France and Bavaria was an important part of a war  against Franco Spanish attempts to dominate Europe. Stressing the associations with the Churchill family made everyone think of the U.K. ‘s role in thwarting a later German plan to dominate Europe. These are unhappy memories of Europe’s centralising  thuggish tendencies and of the great loss of life resisting them entailed. Far from showing the U.K. as a friend and partner it reminds of times when the U.K. stood for self determination of people’s and states against those who wanted to create a European tyranny.

Today most of the Europeans assembled wanted to believe they are more united. They were willing to give the time of day to the U.K. offer of closer friendship without making any positive moves of their own. It was a mistake to think this was an occasion to reboot the U.K./ EU relationship when there were 18 non EU members there as well and when Commission President Von der Leyen was absent seeking votes from the European Parliament to keep her job.

The EU / U.K. relationship is set out in ghastly legal detail with the EU wanting to enforce it in ways that suit them. It is not normally a way to a happy marriage for the bigger partner to make the smaller sign a pre nuptial agreement they do not like, nor does it help the marriage if either partner wants to renegotiate. If the government does want to change the costly and unsatisfactory Treaty it will find changes come at a price which will not be worth offering.

The government would be wrong to enter a defence treaty with the EU. Let us stick to NATO and collaborate through that. They would be wrong to join Horizon and other EU programmes, It is cheaper and better to run our own. They are quite wrong to think being closer to the EU will boost our growth rate.The  EU is mired in slow growth and no growth. The single market is no free market. It is a rule bound  customs Union that is hostile to innovation and small business.  By all means have a growth strategy. The more you divert from the EU model the faster you can grow.