The record number of migrants arriving in Britain between 2021 and 2024 will become an “economic millstone” for the country, Nigel Farage has declared.
The Reform UK leader warned of a “catastrophic” economic hit unless urgent reforms are enacted.
Mr Farage’s home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, warned some 4.8 million foreign nationals moved to the UK between 2021 and 2024.
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Tories react to Reform announcement
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “We look forward to Reform explaining when their new converts will be hauled into the dock to explain the Suella Surge and the Jenrick Jump.
“The Conservatives are under new leadership and setting out clear plans to drastically reduce legal immigration. Reform are busy stuffing their ranks with has-been former politicians whilst pretending they represent change.”
Migrant numbers don’t tell the full story
Reform’s Zia Yusuf claimed former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a “poisonous legacy” on migration.
He said: “These mind boggling numbers do not tell the full story of the catastrophe. It was not just the size, but the composition of the Boris wave that was fundamentally different to previous cohorts of migrants.
“Economically, just 17%, one se of the Boriswave migrants came to Britain as workers on work visas.
“Culturally, Britain went from immigration primarily from EU countries to vastly higher levels of immigration from primarily non EU countries.
“Parts of the country changed beyond recognition in just a few years, and while Boris Johnson is no longer prime minister, his poisonous legacy is only just beginning to unfold.
“In fact, the Boriswave is a ticking fiscal bomb, about to explode.
“According to the government’s own figures between 1.6 and 2.2 million Boriswave migrants are now becoming eligible to receive indefinitely to remain. And shortly after, British citizenship.”
(Image: Getty)
Reform’s Zia Yusuf sets out the ‘ticking fiscal bomb’
Reform’s home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, said record levels of migration were thrust upon voters despite repeatedly voting for the opposite.
Mr Yusuf said: “It’s a detailed analysis of the fiscal impact of the Boris wave, and it reveals it is set to cost every household in Britain 20,000 pounds.
“The Boris wave of unprecedented mass immigration permanently altered the culture of this country.
“It’s permanently altered the fiscal trajectory of the country. It permanently altered the lives of British people against their wishes.
“The Tory Party, having promised in four consecutive manifestos to cut immigration significantly, instead unleashed the most extraordinary surge in mass immigration this country has ever seen.
“Between January of 2021 and June 2024, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative successors issued a staggering 3.8 million long term visas resulting in gross immigration, a 4.8 million. A net immigration of 2.6 million. Annual net immigration averaged more than double the previous decade, which was already a period of historically high mass immigration.”
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Away from migration for a minute…
Wes Streeting said he needs to “start talking to the decision makers, not just the interlocutors” as he reiterated his call to meet with the resident doctor committee of the British Medical Association.
The Health Secretary said members of the committee “appear in the media and say reasonable things like ‘our door is always open. We really want to do a deal with this government, they just need to come back to the table with a better offer’.
“Meanwhile, the actual decision makers, the people who are actually voting on the committee, are saying, ‘meeting the Health Secretary is a waste of time’.”
He went on: “The resident doctors committee of the BMA, these dozens of people who have held the NHS to ransom and just cost us £300 million, have refused point blank to meet me for the last two years, they are literally the only people I have asked to meet as health secretary who said no, and I’m beginning to take it personally.
“Joking aside, I do take it seriously. This bunch of people have just cost the NHS £300 million.
“They are sending officers to negotiate with me who agreed a deal, I think in good faith and agreed to recommend it to their committee, they go back, it’s their committee that says ‘no’.
“I kind of need to understand the committee and their dynamics, and it’s time for me to start talking to the decision makers, not just the interlocutors.”
Suella Braverman breaks silence over migration record
Former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who has defected to Reform, said she will “stand by my record any day.”
Senior Tories reacted with fury over Reform’s plan for a national migration inquiry, pointing to Mrs Braverman and Robert Jenrick’s time in the Home Office.
But the former Home Secretary declared: “This is exactly what we need and I will happily give evidence. When I arrived at the Home Office in September 2022, the number of work and study visas issued the previous year had already exceeded 1,000,000.
“The Boriswave was flooding the country.
“This was a catastrophe. I went into government with a clear plan to cut net migration.
“If we moved quickly, we could bring the numbers down before a General Election, I hoped.
“Yet I was blocked repeatedly by Conservative Prime Ministers and Conservative Cabinet Members. No Minister can act unilaterally- you need Cabinet approval and the Tory Wets kept resisting.
“I kept working to persuade, to push, to lobby, to get changes. I managed to secure the first set of changes (on student dependents) in May 2023.
“These were the first ever changes to begin the reversal of the Boriswave.
“Not nearly enough, but a start. I did not give up. I continued to lobby for the fuller set of changes (salary threshold increase, lower caps etc) but was constantly blocked by the Chancellor, Health, Education, Business and Agriculture departments, and the PM.
“It became one of my big disputes with the PM, and one reason he dismissed me. The PM eventually introduced some of my proposed changes after I left office. But it was all too little, too late.
“I will stand by my record any day.”
Migration levels are an ‘economic millstone’
The costs of a generation of non-EU migrants who came to Britain in the years after 2021 will be an “economic millstone” for the country, Nigel Farage has claimed.
The Reform UK leader was speaking at a central London press conference, in which he pledged to “stop the Boriswave” of migrants who entered the UK under prime minister Boris Johnson.
The Reform UK leader said: “There is still time. There is still something we can do about this Boriswave. But if over a couple of million people get indefinite leave to remain over the course of the next 18 months, we will be putting around our necks an economic millstone that, frankly, will be catastrophic.”
He later defended ex-Conservatives who served in Mr Johnson’s government that had since defected to Reform UK.
Mr Farage said: “Of course, there are some that will say, ‘Ah, but you’ve got Suella Braverman, you’ve got Robert Jenrick in your party’.
“Yes, absolutely. And if you read what Suella has written on this, and you read what Robert has written on this, they tried from within to stop the disaster that really started properly in 2021 and that’s why they resigned or were fired.”
(Image: Getty)
Farage targeting Kemi Badenoch
Nigel Farage is singling out the Tory leader over immigration under the last Tory governement and her opposition to Keir Starmer‘s Chagos island deal.
More details on Reform’s migration inquiry
Party sources said the inquiry will consider “whether their gross negligence in office amounted to criminal conduct”.
What’s the background to this?
A staggering 1,469,000 migrants moved to the UK in the year to March 2023.
The number of arrivals fell slightly to 1,299,000 in the year to June 2024, before dropping again to 898,000 last year.
Net migration, which takes into account the number of people leaving the UK, surged to a record high of 944,000 in the year ending March 2023. It hit 764,000 in 2022, before dropping to 649,000 in June 2024.
It fell to 204,000 in the year to September 2025 as the number of people leaving the country hit the highest level for a century.
Officials believe one in 30 people living in the UK arrived between 2021 and 2024.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood compared the influx to “freedom of movement”.
Nigel Farage set to attack Boris Johnson over migrant surge
The Reform UK leader is due to give a press confrence in around 30 mins where he will demand the former Prime Minister must give evidence at an inquiry into the rapid rise in immigration after Brexit – the so-called ‘Boriswave’.
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Starmer vows to act on Southport recommendations
Addressing whether the Government would act on the recommendations of the Southport Inquiry ahead of the findings being published on Monday, the Prime Minister told reporters: “I gave my word that we will get to the bottom of this and that’s why we’ve set up the inquiry.
“We will act on the recommendations, it’s really important that we do so.
“So obviously there will be the full report, there will be the recommendations, we can go through them in detail – but this, for me, is a matter of principle.
“It’s absolutely right that we act on the findings of this, and we will act on those findings.”
Questioned on whether organisations should be held accountable, Sir Keir Starmer added: “There does have to be accountability, there should always be accountability.
“The first most important thing is to look at what those recommendations are, what needs to change, and to be a Government that says ‘we’re going to carry this, we’re going to do what we said’ – we gave our word on this and when we give our word, we’ll follow through on that.”
Keir Starmer defends EU ‘reset’ plans
Reform and the Conservatives have criticised Government plans to bring the UK into line with EU single market rules.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, the Prime Minister said the changes will only come into force if Parliament passes the legislation, adding that a stronger relationship with Europe is in the “UK’s best interest”.
He said: “We’re in a world where there’s massive conflict, great uncertainty, and I strongly believe that the UK’s best interests are in a stronger, closer relationship with Europe, whether that’s defence and security… energy, inevitably, and also, our economy.”
Sir Keir added that the legislation will make trade easier, reducing “burdens” on businesses and lowering prices.
“A stronger, closer relationship with Europe is in the UK’s best interest, particularly in a world that is as volatile as it is at the moment, and I know that worries a lot of people,” he said.
UK won’t back Trump over Iran blockade
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “we are not supporting the blockade” of the Strait of Hormuz announced by US President Donald Trump and the UK is “not getting dragged in” to the Iran war.
He spoke after the president threatened stop tankers from entering or leaving the key oil and gas shipping lane, a move that is expected to further drive up oil prices when markets open, after they have already risen as a result of Iran’s grip on the strait in retaliation for the US-Israel war against it.
Cost of oil soars again as Iran war hits economy
Oil prices have surged higher after US President Donald Trump vowed to blockade Iranian ports as ceasefire talks ended without agreement.
Brent crude jumped back past 100 US dollars a barrel, rising by more than 7% to 102 dollars in Monday morning trading and sparking fears of a worsening global energy crisis.
Oil had fallen back below the psychological 100 dollars barrier last week after the US and Iran had agreed a two-week ceasefire deal, which included reopening the crucial Strait of Hormuz shipping route, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is carried.
Mr Trump said he would begin a blockade of all Iranian ports on Monday, though this was tempered from an earlier threat to completely block the strait following the breakdown of peace talks with Tehran, which are being mediated by Pakistan.
Reform’s ‘inquiry’ is ‘cheap party political theatrics’
Reform UK’s inquiry would “cost taxpayers millions” the Tories have claimed, hitting back at calls for former Prime Ministers to be forced to give evidence.
Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, branded the move “a piece of cheap party political theatrics” saying all it did was “mask Reform’s lack of actual policies or solutions.”
Speaking to the Daily Express he added: “The Conservative Party has changed and is under new leadership now. The changed Conservatives have developed a plan to fix the UK’s immigration problems.”
Yusuf: ‘Boris will be held to account’
Reform UK’s migration enquiry was triggered by Zia Yusuf who told the Daily Express: “A Reform Government will launch a national inquiry to reveal exactly what happened and how. Boris himself will be forced to testify, under penalty of perjury. He will be held to account.”
Mr Yusuf, who was a Conservative throughout Boris Johnson’s premiership said: “Boris Johnson perpetrated one of the biggest scandals in British history by throwing open our borders to millions who are now set to destroy the country’s finances.”
Trump threatens Iran blockade
Elsewhere, the Iran crisis has deepened once again with the US President Donald Trump threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr Trump made the threat after peace talks with the Iranians broke down. He said that other countries would be involved in the blockade of the oil route but was met with denials from various world leaders.
Sir Keir Starmer is reported to have declined to get involved, amid concerns over rising petrol prices.
Former PM could be forced to testify
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson could be forced to testify under oath at a Reform UK led national inquiry into the migration crisis.
Last night Nigel Farage announced his plans to launch an enquiry, and will today address a press conference on the topic.
The Express will bring you all the latest from the event live.