The British government has the consent of its people to engage in a massive programme of deportations, if it were inclined to do so, polling of social attitudes towards among Britons has found.
In just the latest research to show Britons hold views on border control that outstrip even their American cousins, polling by JL Partners for broadcaster GB News finds UK adults overwhelmingly agree foreign criminals should have no future in the country.
Responding to the polling and the tiny minority against deportations, Brexit leader Nigel Farage observed “the centre is moving very rapidly” and said “all of this indicates the public have just had enough”.
In the polling conducted this month, when asked whether they support deporting migrants who are in the country illegally, and who have committed a crime, an unassailable majority of 81 per cent said they agreed. A negligible eight per cent said they would be against such deportations.
Even when stripping away the hypothetical situation where any given illegal migrant to be deported had also committed a crime while in the country, the clear majority supported removal. 66 per cent said they were in favour of “deportation of all migrants who are in the United Kingdom illegally”, over four times more than respondents against at 15 per cent.
Crucially, for any British government ready to pull the lever on mass deportations, support for this notion is remarkably widespread through the different demographic groups polled. A majority of men, women, most age groups, and all income strata said they were in favour, and at least a plurality of almost all groups agreed. Only Indian-Pakistani-Bangladeshi respondents had a distinct group in opposition to the notion, and even so the plurality was still with deportation, if only just.
Support was also well distributed through political parties. While Reform UK and Conservative voters were predictably the most supportive, even among Liberal Democrat and Green voters, those in favour of deportation outnumbered those against.
Further detail offered by JL Partners compared this state of sentiment in Britain to that in the United States, finding Britons to be far more in favour of deportation than their American cousins. In the U.S., 50 per cent said they agreed with the same illegal migrant deportation statement, a 23 point lead over the 27 per cent who said they disagreed, far behind the 66 per cent in the UK, a staggering 52 point lead over the 14 per cent opposing.
JL Partners Polling co-founder Tom Lubbock appeared on GB NEWS, who commissioned the poll, to discuss the findings, and reflected on the majority of Britons in favour of deportations: “we asked the exact same question in the UK and the U.S., and the British public are actually much more likely than the U.S. public to say they want all illegal immigrants deported. Huge numbers, all of them, regardless of how they came here.”
He blamed the now years-long small boats crisis for the public mood on border control, noting Britons were “tuned in” and “shrewd” on the matter, and observing: “if you’d done this research ten years ago you’d have got nothing like this… It violates their sense of fairness, these numbers have really been trending in the wrong direction for quite some time now”.
The JLP poll is just the latest to show Britain’s hard edge on migration and the massive public appetite for action to deal with the issue, after years of open borders policies. Indeed, almost all population growth in the UK in the 21st century has been caused by mass migration arrivals and several key political issues like housing prices and public safety have been exacerbated by migrant arrivals.
As summarised of other polling in recent weeks:
…a major academic study of British public attitudes to the condition of the United Kingdom found a majority believe the country is divided.
Even more remarkable was the 86 per cent who said they think there is tension between “immigrants and people born in the UK”, the number having increased by 12 points since 2023. Half of voters said they believe the country is changing too fast, and a dominant plurality said they “would like my country to be the way it used to be”.
The acceleration of UK residents saying the country is changing too fast was driven by white Britons, the research stated, who have gone from basically agreeing with their “ethnic minority” neighbours about the country being fine just a few years ago to a majority saying it is out of control.
This research followed another release days before, which again showed the British public hold astonishingly robust views on border control, even to the right of their American counterparts. A study by the National Centre for Social Research found Britons are more likely to agree with migration-sceptic statements than U.S. Donald Trump voters, such as “We risk losing our national identity if we are too open to people from all over the world”.
A considerable 81 per cent of right-wing Brits agreed, trailed by 65 per cent of Trump voters. 70 per cent of the British right said they agreed that “It is bad for society if white people decline as a share of the population”, and 52 per cent of that same group said “society is weakened by being made up of many different races, ethnicities, and religions”.
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