British politics is starting to march to the beat of Reform’s drums.

This morning, in response to Reform’s success in the local elections, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper pledged to cut 50,000 visas for lower-skilled workers. Her opposite number, Chris Philp, said the move didn’t go nearly far enough.

When asked by the BBC “What would your idea of a cap be?” Chris Philp said it would be far tougher than Yvette Cooper’s. While refusing to “shoot from the hip,” the Shadow Home Secretary insisted the long-mooted Conservative cap on migration would be “significantly below the most recent forecasts from the ONS and OBR, which are about 300,000 to 350,000 net per year.”

This would indeed be tougher than Cooper’s proposal — but it raises two issues. First, it still falls well short of what Nigel Farage has proposed, a “one in, one out” or “net zero” migration policy. Second, it is far out of step with public opinion. In fact, it is an order of magnitude higher than what most of their own voters would consider acceptable or necessary.

In 2024, People Polling found that 85% of 2019 Conservative voters supported reducing net migration to the “tens of thousands” — a pledge made, but never fulfilled, by successive Tory governments. That is despite, as the Ipsos Immigration Tracker revealed the same year, that most Britons overestimate the actual number of migrants, but still want lower numbers. Across long-term surveys, a consistent majority favour some reduction, strongly suggesting that a public consensus hovers around 100,000 or fewer net migrants per year.

Against that backdrop, promising to cut migration to “just” over 250,000 annually may amount to a political death sentence for the Conservative Party. That’s because immigration is widely seen as the core issue hollowing out Conservative support. Ipsos’ tracker reports that 69% of the public are dissatisfied with the government’s handling of immigration — the highest level since records began.

Immigration is the main reason many former Conservatives have defected to Reform UK. Nigel Farage has capitalised on this sense of betrayal, repeatedly highlighting Tory failures and positioning Reform as the only party willing to act decisively. He has pledged to “resist” the placement of asylum seekers in counties governed by Reform, while party chairman Zia Yusuf has promised to use “judicial reviews, injunctions, and planning laws” to block such relocations and make settlement significantly more difficult in Reform-held areas.

The electorate is furious about the Tories’ immigration betrayal. But many of them are not yet aware of the impact, as new arrivals tend to agglomerate in London and the South East, and in Labour-voting inner urban areas. But before the next election, Labour plans to require every UK borough to take a “fair share” of asylum seekers, a proposal which includes housing successful claimants in 1.5 million new social homes, as well as homes on private long-term lets. This could fuel yet more anti-immigration sentiment, driving further votes towards Reform.

Reform has successfully positioned itself as a stronger alternative to both Labour and the Conservatives on immigration. If the Tories fail to propose a solution that aligns more closely with public expectations, they risk losing even more support to Reform UK, whose hardline stance resonates strongly with the electorate’s desire for stricter immigration control. The Tories continue to suggest headline figures that the public considers still too high will reinforce the sense that they simply don’t understand the scale or importance of their immigration betrayal, and voters will punish them by voting for Farage’s tougher proposals instead.

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Tom Jones writes at The Potemkin Village Idiot.

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