LONDON: On June 23, it will be exactly 10 years since the UK voted narrowly to leave the EU, a decision driven primarily by concerns about what politicians campaigning for Brexit described as “out-of-control immigration.”
Britain, insisted the UK Independence Party in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, had to leave the EU in order to get control over its borders. Since then, however, successive governments have failed to address public concerns about immigration.
According to the Office for National Statistics, in the year ending June 2016, at the time of the Brexit vote, 758,000 immigrants arrived in Britain. In the year ending June 2025, there were 761,000 — slightly more.
Floral tributes for Henry Nowak are pictured outside of Portswood Police Station in Southampton, southern England, on June 3, 2026. (AFP)
As the rioting in Belfast last week demonstrated, the immigration issue is more toxic than ever, threatening to undermine the UK’s social cohesion and bring about a radical remaking of the country’s political landscape.
Over the past decade, much of the political focus has been on asylum seekers arriving in the UK after crossing the English Channel in small boats, although on average these people account for less than 5 percent of overall immigration figures.
According to The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, in the year to May 31, about 36,000 people arrived in the UK on small boats, down 13 percent on the year before and less than half the total number seeking asylum.
We will crack down on anyone who is fueling this division.
Sir Keir Starmer, UK prime minister
In March 2023, the then-Conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak, pledged to “stop the boats.” His failure to do so likely cost him his job. The general election in July 2024, which saw Labour win power under Sir Keir Starmer, ended 14 years of Conservative rule.
However, there was a sub-plot to the election, which is now rapidly coming to the fore. Reform UK, the relaunched Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage, won five seats and — crucially, as a measure of its widening popularity — 14.3 percent of the vote.
Since then, it has been joined by a number of disenchanted Conservative MPs, including former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, bringing its total number of seats in the House of Commons to eight.
Sir Keir Starmer, UK prime minister
Now, haunted by the issue of immigration and dogged by the increasing appeal of Reform UK, Labour’s own tenancy of 10 Downing Street is looking increasingly like a short-term let.
Following a series of violent incidents, the latest flashpoint in the immigration debate was Northern Ireland, where a knife attack by a Sudanese immigrant in north Belfast on June 8 triggered riots targeting ethnic minorities.
Hadi Alodid, 30, has been charged with attempted murder, possession of a bladed article in a public place and threats to kill a health worker. Remanded in custody, he will appear in court on July 8.
Fires burn around police vehicles as protesters (behind) stand off with police in Glengormley, north of Belfast, Northern Ireland, on June 10, 2026. (AFP)
Phone-camera footage of the attack, which cost 44-year-old victim Stephen Ogilvie an eye, quickly circulated on social media. On the day of the attack, masked, black-clad men roamed the streets, setting fire to houses and vehicles and driving residents from their homes.
Among them were two care workers from Uganda, who were trapped inside their home and had to be rescued.
One of them, Sumayah Nakazibwe, later told the media: “Someone who is actually rioting doesn’t know that the person they are targeting is actually looking after their mother or their granny.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks outside the Havering Town Hall a day after local elections in east London on May 8, 2026. (AFP)
For the rioters and those egging them on, such details appear to be beside the point.
Posts on X by far-right activist Tommy Robinson, describing “yet another invader attack on our people” and advertising the locations of protests, were shared by Elon Musk, the owner of X, and viewed more than 10 million times.
Musk posted: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!”
People turn out for a demonstration against racism and call for calm in central Belfast, Northern Ireland on June 13, 2026, after a few nights of disorder hit the city when video of a knife attack on June 8 went viral across social media platforms. (AFP)
It was not the first time Musk, who this week became the world’s first trillionaire, has intervened in UK race relations.
Last December, 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak was stabbed to death on a street in the southern English coastal city of Southampton. His killer, a British-born Sikh called Vickrum Digwa, falsely told police Nowak had racially abused him.
When Digwa was jailed for life for murder on June 1, violent protests broke out in Southampton after police bodycam footage emerged which showed officers had handcuffed the dying Nowak, having not believed he had been stabbed.
Masked youths block a road with burning debris in north Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the evening of June 9, 2026. (AFP)
The footage prompted Musk to urge his followers to “send the video to everyone you know showing how heinously Nowak was treated by the police in his dying moments and how the police cravenly kowtowed to his murderer.”
The intervention earned a rebuke from Sir Keir Starmer. “Musk, again, has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division,” the prime minister said. “That is not who we are in Britain. In Britain, we are reasonable, tolerant people.”
But that tolerance appears to be ebbing away rapidly.
People turn out for a demonstration against racism and call for calm in central Belfast, Northern Ireland on June 13, 2026, after a few nights of disorder hit the city when video of a knife attack on June 8 went viral across social media platforms. (AFP)
Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, claimed the Nowak case was evidence of “two-tier policing,” to which the only correct response was “pure, cold rage.”
It was a sentiment that echoed that of US Vice President JD Vance. Nowak, he posted, would still be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.”
Belfast and Southampton are only the latest examples of unrest linked to immigration and social media amplification.
British far-right activist Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, stands with demonstrators protesting about the Police's handling of the detention of victim Henry Nowak, outside Southampton Central Police Station in Southampton, southern England, on June 2, 2026, following the conviction of his murderer Vickrum Digwa. (AFP)
In July 2024, three girls, aged 6, 7 and 9, were stabbed to death while at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, Merseyside.
Mass anti-immigration riots and attacks on shops, mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers broke out across the country after false rumors spread on social media that the attacker was an Islamist migrant.
In fact, Axel Rudakubana, who was sentenced to life in January 2025, was the UK-born son of Christians who had moved to the UK from Uganda in 2002.
23-year-old British Sikh man Vickrum Digwa who was jailed by a UK court on June 1 for life for killing 18-year-old student Henry Nowak in a case that sparked anger after police handcuffed the dying victim following a false claim of racial abuse in Southampton. (AFP)
Regardless of the facts, each of these tragedies has built momentum behind the UK’s far-right populist parties ahead of the UK’s next general election, due to be held no later than August 2029, which could spell the end of the country’s traditional two-party politics.
For months, polls have put support for Farage’s Reform UK at between 25 and 30 percent, compared with less than 20 percent each for Labour and the Conservatives.
In many towns and cities, this support is reflected in the large numbers of red and white St. George’s flags being flown from homes and lampposts.
Jamie Corrie stands outside his property in Lendrick Street after demonstrations turned violent the night before, burning vehicles and homes, in eastern Belfast, Northern Ireland, on June 10, 2026. (AFP)
Raised ostensibly in the name of patriotism, for many the flags are a symbol of a more radical brand of nationalism, intended to exclude and intimidate ethnic minorities.
The swing in public attitudes became clear when Reform UK claimed victory in local elections for English councils on May 7. The party gained 1,454 seats to take control of 14 councils. The Labour party lost 1,498 seats and control of 38 councils.
Analysts scrambled to translate the results to a general election scenario.
A calculation carried out for the BBC concluded that Reform UK would have won 26 percent of a national vote, followed by the Green Party (18 percent), Conservatives and Labour (17 percent each) and the Liberal Democrats (16 percent).
“UK public opinion,” concluded the Electoral Reform Society, “is now unprecedentedly fragmented.”
Just how fragmented will be tested in a unique by-election on Thursday in the northern English constituency of Makerfield.
The by-election was called when the sitting Labour MP stood down to allow Andy Burnham, mayor of Manchester and darling of the Labour left, the opportunity to return to Westminster as an MP, so he could challenge Starmer for the leadership of the party and therefore the country.
But against the backdrop of anti-immigration sentiment, Burnham’s victory is not as certain as it once might have seemed.
Many locals, already annoyed at their constituency being used by Burnham as a stepping-stone to national office, may also prove unwilling to elect an MP — and, possibly, a prime minister — who is on the liberal side of the immigration debate.
It is telling that although polls show Burnham is currently in the lead, the Reform UK candidate is hot on his heels.
Perhaps luckily for Burnham, the right-wing vote is split. Restore Britain, a party even further to the right than Farage’s Reform UK, is siphoning off some support.
But Restore is the latest manifestation of the UK’s apparent drift to the right. The party was founded in June 2025 by Reform MP Rupert Lowe, after he was suspended from the party over policy differences with Farage.
The row, he later tweeted, had blown up because Reform’s leadership “are upset with me because I have been outspoken on the need for a large number of deportations ... I stand by every single word I have said on the subject.
“If you are here illegally, you should be deported. If that results in 1 million-plus deportations ... so be it.”
It is a stance that many voters may find attractive — and which Farage and Reform UK will have to emulate or better if, as is currently predicted, they are to form Britain’s next government.
According to Electoral Calculus, a political consultancy specializing in election modeling, if there were a general election held today, Reform would take 376 seats, leaving the Conservatives and Labour trailing with 240 and 245, respectively.
For the estimated 16 percent of UK residents who were born abroad — some 11 million people — such an outcome would be the harbinger of an uncertain future.
