Harvey Proctor: Britain’s immigration crisis is no longer reversible

K. Harvey Proctor is  President of Facing Allegations in Contexts of Trust (FACT), and  Private Secretary to the Duke of Rutland. He was a Conservative and Unionist Party Member of Parliament, 1979 – 1987

Kemi Badenoch recently admitted that fourteen years of Conservative government have failed to control immigration. Robert Jenrick has sounded similar alarms. Both are right to say the system is broken. But this is not a recent failure.

The truth is far starker.

Britain’s immigration crisis was not born in the past decade. Its roots lie in the policies of the 1960s and 70s, when both Labour and Conservative governments allowed uncontrolled flows from the New Commonwealth and Pakistan. That trajectory continued through the 1980s and beyond. The consequences are now plain: overstretched hospitals, overflowing classrooms, divided communities, and an ever-growing strain on social cohesion.

This is not simply a question of numbers, though numbers are critical.

Integration on such a vast scale has become impossible. Once trust between communities frays, it is almost impossible to restore. As each year passes, further immigration only deepens the fractures.

What makes this worse is that politicians of every stripe have long known the truth but feared to speak it.

To acknowledge the problem risks denunciation, career ruin, and accusations of bigotry. Silence has become the currency of cowardice. But as I have argued for decades, following Enoch Powell, to see and not to speak is the real betrayal.

For years, I have warned that Britain was on a course where ordinary people would feel like strangers in their own country. That is not a fringe sentiment. It is now voiced openly across the political spectrum. Sir Keir Starmer himself has acknowledged it – yet when others raised the same concerns in earlier decades, they were hounded into silence.

This is not about relitigating the past.

It is about recognising a hard truth: the damage is done.

The challenge of mass integration has already outstripped the capacity of the state. Britain cannot absorb millions more without accelerating decline. Reducing immigration now is not a matter of choice, it is an act of national survival.

The cloud that was once “no bigger than a man’s hand” has become today’s storm.

The people know it. Their voices are finally being heard in Westminster.

But unless action is taken, and quickly, the betrayal of silence will be remembered as one of the greatest failures in modern British politics.