When you’re a frequent visitor to the south of England from Scotland, you notice certain things. There’s a lot more traffic. You can grow tomatoes and figs outside in summer. The stack of Daily Mails in the newsagents is measured in feet not inches. And people do seem to talk an awful lot about immigration.

When we were there recently, it came up repeatedly in conversations we were having or overhearing on the beach or in cafes. The problems with the Rwanda scheme. The small boats. The impact on public services. The small boats. How the Tories got it wrong. The small boats.

Understandably, there is more concern about irregular Channel crossings on the south coast than Scotland, but there are also startling misconceptions about it. One person we spoke to was under the impression that the record high net migration figure of 685,000 last year was down to hundreds of thousands of people crossing the Channel on dinghies. In fact, the vast majority came on work and study visas, encouraged by the British Government. Some 31,000 came on small boats during the year ending March 2024, which is a significant number but a truly tiny proportion of the total - less than five per cent.

It's not surprising people think there’s been an “invasion” across the Channel, though, is it? Because that’s the word the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman used. For the last five years, Britain has been governed by a party that has cynically whipped up hysteria about the small boats, for purely political ends, using inflammatory words like “swarm” and promoting disgraceful ideas like........

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