Immigration: How British Politics Failed
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- Episode
- Episode One
- Broadcast Info
- 2024 (60 mins)
- Description
- Revealing who and what made immigration unignorable for New Labour and Cameron’s Tories. Blair, Cameron, Farage, migrant activists and government and media insiders go on record. This two-part series uncovers who and what made immigration a burning political issue for New Labour and the Conservatives, and reveals the pressures and broken promises that have pushed successive governments into crisis. Prime Ministers, Home Secretaries and government insiders all talk openly about the challenges they faced and decisions they made. Media figures and migrant activists explain how these choices transformed the landscape of our national life. Immigration controversies contributed to the downfall of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Rishi Sunak, and created turmoil for Tony Blair, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. But how did this issue, considered by many unsayable since the days of Enoch Powell, gain such prominence in our national politics? Programme 1 looks at the origins of the current debate in the early 2000s when a research group named Migration Watch helped transform how politicians and the media talked about immigration, and helped shape policy at the highest levels. It tracks global events that impacted migration to the UK, and analyses the consequences of key decisions such as EU enlargement. With in-the-room testimony from the highest levels of government, it reveals how the consequences of our politicians’ decisions and failures are playing out to this day.
- Genre
- Social Science; Politics
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Immigration: How British Politics Failed". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/251421 (Accessed 19 Apr 2025)