The price of ignoring migration: Britain’s democratic erosion in motion

The mass mobilisation in London during the “Unite the Kingdom” rally last week, drawing between 110,000 and 150,000 people under Tommy Robinson’s leadership and amplified by Elon Musk’s intervention, signals a significant moment of political rupture in Britain. While protests over migration are not new, the sheer scale of this rally, the overt invocation of Christian nationalism, and the explicit call for “revolutionary government change” mark a new phase in the articulation of far-right politics in the United Kingdom.

Such developments cannot be understood as episodic anger alone. They must be read as manifestations of a deeper structural crisis that links migration, sovereignty, and legitimacy. In Britain, as across the European Union, migration has become the central axis around which anxieties about national identity, economic security, and political order revolve.

At the heart of this crisis lies a theoretical problem, the relationship between sovereignty and borders. Carl Schmitt’s well-known dictum that the sovereign is he who decides on the exception underlines that the capacity to define membership, who belongs and who does not, is foundational to state authority. Borders, therefore, are not merely geographical demarcations. They are existential thresholds where the polity asserts its autonomy.

When migration is experienced as uncontrolled, when citizens believe the state cannot regulate who enters and under what terms, borders cease to function as sites of order and instead become symbols of rupture. Hannah Arendt warned in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ that statelessness, or the inability of states to determine membership, corrodes the very basis of rights, for rights without political community are fragile abstractions. Britain’s turmoil today exemplifies this danger, i.e., the failure to articulate and enforce clear rules on migration has opened a void now filled by demagogues, street movements, and global actors such as Musk.

Yet this is not the only pathway to rupture. Even when migration is legal and formally regulated, if citizens perceive that the state prioritises the welfare or rights of migrants above their own, another layer of fracture emerges. The perception that newcomers are favoured while longstanding citizens face economic precarity or declining public services undermines the reciprocity on which solidarity depends. In both cases, whether through the loss of border control or the privileging of migrants over citizens, the outcome is the same: the legitimacy of the state erodes, and the political community begins to fragment.

The consequences of uncontrolled migration, or more precisely, migration perceived as uncontrolled, can be conceptualised as six distinct fissures. The first is institutional erosion. States are judged on their ability to maintain order, and border control is among their most visible functions. In the United Kingdom, net migration reached approximately 431,000 in 2024, with nearly one million arrivals that year.

Across the EU, more than 900,000 first-time asylum applications were lodged in 2024, with 1.24 million pending cases at year’s end. Such figures, coupled with backlogs and irregular arrivals, produce the perception that governments are unable to perform basic sovereign tasks. This perception metastasises into a generalised distrust of institutions, eroding faith in courts, parliaments, and even democratic procedures themselves.

The second fissure is cultural insecurity. Migration is rarely interpreted only in quantitative terms. It is experienced symbolically, as a challenge to the continuity of shared identity. In Britain, approximately 16 percent of the population is foreign-born, and in London, the figure exceeds 40 percent. While diversity has historically enriched societies, unmanaged diversity can be experienced as dislocation. National symbols such as flags, language, rituals become politicised. The London rally’s chant of “Christ is King” shows how cultural anxiety can transform into religious nationalism, reframing migration as a civilisational struggle rather than a policy challenge.

The third fissure is economic resentment. Migration is frequently cast as a zero-sum contest over scarce resources. Although evidence often suggests that migrants contribute more in taxes and labour than they draw in welfare, such macroeconomic data does little to alleviate the lived perception of competition in housing markets, employment, and public services. In the UK, the housing shortage and strained National Health Service have intensified these perceptions. Paradoxically, Europe and Britain structurally require migrants to offset ageing populations and shrinking labour forces, yet politically, such inflows provoke resentment rather than gratitude.

The fourth fissure is spatial segregation, which produces what the Cantle Report (2001) called “parallel lives.” Migrants often cluster in specific neighbourhoods, leading to limited interaction with native populations. For natives, such enclaves become symbols of cultural displacement; for migrants, they function as protective spaces against hostility. In both cases, segregation reinforces division, creating echo chambers of mistrust rather than sites of integration. This spatial fragmentation feeds directly into political narratives that accuse elites of abandoning “ordinary people” to the consequences of unplanned diversity.

The fifth fissure is political radicalisation. The perception of uncontrolled migration offers fertile ground for movements at the extremes. Across Europe, this dynamic is evident. Alternative für Deutschland surged to become Germany’s second-largest party, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National has normalised far-right politics in France, and Giorgia Meloni built electoral victory in Italy on anti-migrant rhetoric.

In Britain, Robinson, once marginalised as a street agitator, has mobilised crowds of unprecedented size, signalling the mainstreaming of Right mobilisation. Such actors gain traction precisely because they offer clarity and closure (close the border, repatriate migrants, reclaim sovereignty) while centrist parties appear evasive and fragmented. Over time, the pragmatic middle ground of democracy is hollowed out, leaving polarisation as the new normal.

The sixth fissure is moral polarisation. Migration debates are transformed into questions of absolute morality. To favour stricter controls is cast as inhumane. To favour openness is cast as betrayal. This moralisation forecloses compromise. As politics shifts from problem-solving to moral combat, democratic deliberation collapses. The London rally shows this dynamic, where the debate was not about visa categories or asylum quotas but about existential threats to children, culture, and religion. Such moral polarisation leaves little room for nuance, and in the process, corrodes the ethos of liberal democracy itself.

If Britain and the EU fail to address these fissures, the consequences extend far beyond the immediate politics of migration. The first outcome is democratic erosion. Citizens disillusioned with the capacity of mainstream institutions will turn to populists and authoritarians who promise swift, decisive action. The trajectory of AfD, RN, Fidesz, and Robinson demonstrates that migration politics has become a vector for illiberal democracy. The second outcome is the normalisation of street-level violence. In London, the rally resulted in 26 injured police officers and 25 arrests; in Europe, similar clashes around migrant accommodation centres have become routine. When state authority falters, rival groups take enforcement into their own hands, and politics migrates from the parliament to the street.

The third and most profound outcome is the collapse of solidarity. Welfare states and redistributive systems depend not only on fiscal transfers but on a moral sense of shared belonging. When belonging is contested, solidarity erodes. Citizens resist redistribution to groups they view as outsiders; migrants, facing hostility, retreat into enclaves. What emerges is not pluralism but fragmentation, with mutual obligation dissolved.

The demographic dimension makes this even more acute. Europe’s working-age population is projected to shrink dramatically by mid-century, while the share of those over 85 will double. In Britain, population growth to 72.5 million by 2032 will be driven entirely by migration, as natural change approaches zero. Migration is a structural necessity for sustaining pensions, health systems, and labour markets. Yet precisely because it is necessary, failures of governance are politically explosive. Mismanaged migration produces the paradox where what is economically indispensable becomes politically intolerable.

Thus, migration, when well-governed, can enrich societies, replenish labour forces, and sustain welfare systems. But when migration is experienced as uncontrolled, it refracts wider anxieties about identity, sovereignty, and legitimacy. Borders are not only territorial lines; they are thresholds of meaning. If they blur, the polity fractures. Britain and Europe must therefore rebuild legitimacy in migration governance: asylum systems that are humane and efficient, integration policies that prevent parallel lives, demographic strategies that link inflows to labour needs, and political narratives that affirm sovereignty without surrendering to exclusion. Without such recalibration, the vacuum will not remain empty, demagogues, transnational far-right networks, and the politics of fear will fill it.

If nothing changes, Britain and the EU will find not just their politics and institutions altered, but their very conception of community undone. Migration will continue, it is inevitable, but the true test is whether democracies can govern it while preserving both sovereignty and solidarity.

The author (X: @adityasinha004) writes on macroeconomic and geopolitical issues. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.