KEY POINTS
- Badenoch vows permanent annual limit on legal immigration to protect public services.
- She stresses integration and identity making in setting up a coherent British national identity.
- Badenoch’s leadership heralds a historical change in UK politics.
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch is seeking urgent action on immigration, and promises tougher migration policies as they become ‘unsustainable pace.’
We risk overwhelming our public services through the numbers we see coming now and breaching our social cohesion, she told Westminster on Wednesday.
She said: “Immigration is at a pace too fast for public services to keep up with.” The system that replaced free movement is not working, Badenoch said, also criticizing previous Tory governments for failing to manage immigration effectively.
Those measures include a hard annual cap on legal immigration to protect housing, healthcare and wages.
Badenoch did not provide specific figures, but insisted more stringent rules to avoid public service fatigue were necessary.
Integrate, and Become One People
Badenoch said immigrants should be made to be part of British values in order to form a strong national identity.
She warned that without a shared national identity the country would suffer and its key component, from the integration perspective, has to be integration.
She has said she also plans a comprehensive review of existing immigration laws and treaties to close loopholes and stop system abuses.
It will also be easier for us to have more robust immigration laws because the European Convention on Human Rights will not stop us from doing it, she added.
Although we expect to see migration figures fall, Badenock warned that reforms need to be taken in order to ensure that the immigration system is in the interests of the British people.
Leading the Cause of History and Conservative Vision
The remarks come as Badenoch enters her role as the first black woman to head a major UK political party after replacing Rishi Sunak as leader of the opposition.
And she won the Conservative leadership race, beating Robert Jenrick by 53,806 votes to 41,388.
Badenoch, further tasked with rebuilding a party nursing its worst ever election defeat, is seeking to position the Conservatives as standard bearers for protection of public service and national unity through her tough immigration tone.
