It is a peculiar sort of mirror that the Swiss hold up to Britain this morning. A national referendum on capping the population at 10 million. A cap. A number. A line in the alpine snow. Here, in the soggy, overcrowded precincts of Westminster, the echoes are deafening.
The vote in Switzerland is not binding, not really. But the politics of it are brutally binding on the imagination. The Swiss People's Party, who pushed this, are tapping a vein. The same vein that throbs in every focus group Downing Street has seen this year. The same vein that pulses through the letters sent to constituency offices in Clacton, in Boston, in Skegness.
‘Too many people.’ That is the unspoken cry. The UK population is projected to hit 70 million by 2030. Net migration, even after the crackdown, remains stubbornly high. The government’s own independent watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, says it adds to the deficit. The Treasury says it boosts growth. Both cannot be right. Or perhaps they are, but the politics is what it is.
I spoke to a former Home Office minister this morning. He is on the right of the party. He laughed when I mentioned Switzerland. ‘They have a haven of direct democracy. We have a court of groupthink.’ He pointed to the Rwanda scheme, the Illegal Migration Act, all the tough talk that never quite lands. ‘The public are not stupid. They see through the theatre.’
What theatre? The theatre of a government that wants to sound tough but cannot deliver. The theatre of a Labour opposition that says nothing, except that they will be ‘more controlled’. What does controlled mean? Nobody knows. But the Swiss have a definition. 10 million. A number you can put on a ballot paper.
There is another dimension. The vote is not just about population. It is about identity, about the pace of change, about the feeling that the country is no longer yours. These are delicate things. They cannot be legislated away. They can only be managed, or mismanaged.
Downing Street is watching. They will say nothing. They will wait for the result. If the vote passes, expect a statement from a backbench 1922 Committee meeting. Expect a whisper campaign that the Prime Minister needs to get a grip. If it fails, expect relief but no change.
The truth is that migration is the fault line of British politics. It has been since 2004, since the accession of Eastern Europe, since the referendum of 2016. It has not gone away. It has festered. The Swiss have given it a fresh airing. And in the dark corners of Whitehall, the old anxieties stir.
