Submission to TxP Progress Prize. Question title: ‘Britain is stuck. How can we get it moving again?’ Link to brief – https://txp.fyi/progress-prize. 

By Ben Cope and James Lawrence 

In September 2020, journalist and Substack author Matthew Yglesias published One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger. In his book, Yglesias argues that America is not overcrowded and needs a substantially larger population to compete with rivals such as China and India in the future. We recommend taking a similar approach in Britain, using immigration to grow our population by 1% every year to reach 140 million by 2100. 

Demographics are the key to long-term success, but its twin components are under threat in Britain. The fertility rate is low and falling, and natalist policies designed to increase it are likely ineffective. Immigration, on the other hand, though high, is unpopular and therefore at risk. We propose a system to bolster immigration’s popularity by prioritising both economic and cultural prosperity, safeguarding Britain’s demographics and long-term success. 

This country is rapidly resembling a geriatric ward. Fertility rates have been below replacement levels – 2.1 children per woman – since the early 1970s and are continuing to fall (currently at 1.55). At this rate, Britain’s native population will soon peak, before beginning to atrophy. Britain will become a land of pensioners, with nearly a quarter of the population being over 65 in 2035.

The results of this are well-documented. Older populations are less productive, grow slower, and lack innovation.¹ In democracies, inverted population pyramids also skews politics towards the grey vote. This means higher spending on healthcare and pensions (which already accounts for over 30% of government expenditure), less long-term investment and more risk aversion. Stagnation becomes self-fulfilling. From a geopolitical perspective, flatlining populations and growth leaves us comparatively weak. We believe Britain has a role to play in defending liberal democracy in the future, and that this is therefore unacceptable. 

Like Yglesias, we acknowledge there are two potential solutions: create more people or invite more people. The first of these, the natalist cause, has rapidly risen up the political agenda recently. The more sensible policy remedies take either a libertarian or socialist feminist approach, including proposals to reduce childcare and housing costs and promote flexible work. Less practical have been socially conservative and paternalistic suggestions of creating a pro-natalist culture. Demographer Paul Moreland, for example, drew ridicule for suggesting the government tax the childless. 

But natalist policies – even the most sensible ones – lack evidence of success. The baby bust isn’t solely a British phenomenon, but one afflicting most of the world. Every developed country – bar Israel – has a fertility rate below replacement levels, as well as many developing countries such as India, Vietnam and Brazil. Several of these countries are putting natalist policies into practice, but to no avail.² Hungary’s expensive natalist programme has failed to significantly reinvigorate its fertility rate, while the cost of childcare appears to have no correlation to births.³⁴ Although we support supply-side measures that improve equality and deliver an economic return even if unsuccessful (i.e. more mothers working due to reduced childcare costs), they cannot be relied upon to increase Britain’s population. 

That leaves Yglesias’ other solution: import more people. But the British public don’t want it. Today’s high net migration figures – up to three quarters of a million a year – are grossly unpopular. The public consistently say they want lower immigration, and have supported parties and campaigns which promise it, whether that be the Conservatives, Ukip or Brexit. As such, politicians feel compelled to talk tough on immigration, even if, knowing slashing immigration would poleax the economy, they increase numbers through the backdoor (see Student visas, social care and teaching).⁵ But such deceptions can only ever be a short-term solution and threaten immigration in the long-run. 

It’s possible to create a land of 140 million Britons by 2100. Protestations about Britain being ‘full’ are simply false. In our model, in 2100, Britain would still use over 50% of its land for agriculture (down from 63% today), while maintaining urban density levels and green spaces. Heavy rainfall means water shortages are not an issue – unlike in most of the world given climate change – so long as we fix leakages and domestic regional disparities, while supplies of electricity, infrastructure and public services can all be maintained by a strong economy and sound planning system. Additional housing can be built simply by meeting the current 300,000 per year target (until 2040, conveniently when many planning authorities’ local plans will be updated), while the supply of talented immigrants is effectively unlimited for this century at least.⁶ 

The stumbling block to achieving 140 million Britons is not physical, but cultural. For example, a survey of Ukip voters showed many would soften their stance on immigration if reassured about assimilation. We therefore need to create a popular immigration system that addresses these concerns while increasing Britain’s population by the necessary 1% per year. To achieve this, we should reform our work visa system and revolutionise how we communicate it – putting culture and transparency front and centre.

The Economist may have read the polls correctly when it said: “British voters want more immigrants but less immigration too,” but this underplays the public’s legitimate concerns. ‘Unskilled’ immigration lowers the wages of native workers in those industries, although it also lowers costs for everyone else. And immigration can lead to cultural change people are uncomfortable with, particularly when immigrants’ cultures are radically different from Britain’s. Acknowledging immigration can have trade-offs shouldn’t be taboo. Sweeping reasonable concerns under the carpet undermines trust in politics and grants undue legitimacy to racist Far Right politics.⁷ 

We therefore recommend reforming the visa system to prioritise Britain’s economic and cultural prosperity. In practice, this means introducing a tiered points-based system, whereby more culturally similar countries have lower points requirements than those less similar.⁸ Countries would be regularly sorted by a list of metrics, such as GDP per capita, support for democracy and attitudes towards women.⁹ Australians – and indeed Botswanans – would currently find it easy to move here on work visas; Iranians and Sudanese less so. The aims, processes and outcomes of this new system would be communicated transparently. 

This system would have its critics. Some would accuse it of prejudice. However, it’s our view that culture is important, differences between cultures affect the tendency to assimilate, and that Britain’s immigration system should reflect this.¹⁰ And although others would claim this system tars everyone in a country with the same brush, the alternative of one-on-one interviews with trained immigration officials wouldn’t be cost-effective, while tests to work out prospective immigrants’ values would – like the current citizenship test – prove ineffective. 

An intentional policy of increasing a country’s population in this manner would be without historical precedent. It will be critical that beyond creating a system that can be ‘sold’ to the public, institutions are put in place to ensure immigrants can assimilate and be successful, otherwise public support will rightly dissipate. If we cannot build at least 300,000 houses per year, for example, this policy is a non-starter. 

For years, immigration has found support among politicos and business leaders but proven unpopular with the public. We hope this system means immigration can work for everyone. 

Ben Cope is a strategic communications professional and political commentator. 

James Lawrence is a Liberal Democrat councillor and Physics teacher.

Annex 

Given the word limit, we’ve approached this as an opinion piece rather than a policy paper. There are, however, several points which we think would benefit from further explanation and evidencing, in particular, the population modelling methodology we have used. We understand this may be seen as a way of ‘gaming’ the word limit, so we have kept this section short and also understand if it cannot be part of the judging process.

Our base data set used the 2020 ONS data for births, deaths and net migration projections to 2045. We used the stated ONS figures for 2020 and 2021, with modelled births and deaths thereafter. ONS TFR numbers for 2020-2023 were used, with births=(TotalPop*TFR/2)/BirthFactor with the divisor birth factor calibrated from the 2020 and 2021 data. The death rate each year was calculated from the 2020 ONS projections and applied: deaths=TotalPop*DeathRate. TFR was linearly scaled between ONS 2025 prediction (1.53) and 2045 prediction (1.59), and thereafter linearly increased up to 1.73 in line with long-term TFR predictions.

We modelled seven different immigration scenarios: zero net migration, +100,000, +250,000, +500,000, +750,000, and 1% and 2% population growth. You can see the projections mapped below. 

All scenarios with net immigration 250k or greater, used these TFRs and death rates. For the 100k immigration scenario, we kept the TFR at 1.53 from 2025 onwards and incremented the death rate by 0.00002 per year beyond 2045. For 0 net migration we linearly scaled TFR from 1.53 in 2025 to 1.3 in 2100, and incremented the death rate by 0.00004 per year beyond 2045. This is to reflect the steady drop in native birth rate and therefore the relative increase in the rate of death as the rate of narrowing of the population pyramid increases.

Household requirement was determined by dividing the population increase by 2.4, the average household size.

The quality of our prediction drops the further from the original 2020 ONS data scenario that we diverge, as we do not model the population by age strata. By looking at similar types of projections in research papers, our model – even with the TFR and death rate adjustments in the low migration scenarios – undersells the population decrease, and oversells the amount of migration required for 140 million population prediction.

The full data set and graphed models can be provided on request.

Endnotes

1.  We acknowledge there are more recent papers on these three points, but we think they make the points most effectively.

2.  This is a potentially controversial statement, but we would ask natalist policy proponents to point to a single country where natalist policies have increased fertility, where it is likely the main cause. Efforts in China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Poland and many others have led to no discernible increase. 

3.  We note that although Hungary’s fertility rates have risen slightly since natalist policies were introduced, the increase has tracked similar rises in other Eastern European countries such as Czechia and Poland, where such policies were not in place. 

4.  For example, Aria Babu from the Policy Exchange points out that: “In Austria, the cost of a nursery place for two kids is 3% of an average woman’s income, whereas in Switzerland it costs 64% of her income, and those countries have the exact same birth rate.” Clip available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=gXcZnif4ne_01Q5l&v=NDkz8TFDsQ8&feature=youtu.be. 

5.  Ben wrote about this phenomenon recently for Reaction – https://reaction.life/conservatives-immigration-student-visa/. 

6.  In How Migration Really Works, Hain de Haas argued that falling global fertility rates mean immigration can only ever be a short-term solution to ageing populations. However, he comes to this conclusion using long-termist time frames outside of our scope. 

7.  We note the increase in ‘bell curve’ discourse among politically engaged accounts on social media. For example, popular accounts such as cremieuxrecueil frequently make assertions about the relative IQs of different ethnicities. This political economy played out this week when the University of Amsterdam published a report suggesting Somali immigrants have cost the state of the Netherlands significantly more than any other country. Report available here: https://demo-demo.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Borderless_Welfare_State-2.pdf. These views no doubt filter down into wider discourse, creating the illusion of legitimacy. 

8.  We would also recommend additional reforms to the system, including a removal of the cap on skilled migrants and a simplification of the process required to prove English language capability. The process to obtain citizenship should also be reformed so that it is a relatively swift, low-cost and accessible route to citizenship. 

9.  Other examples of potential metrics include: crime levels, violence levels, separation between church and state, attitudes towards ethnic minorities, and attitudes towards homosexuality. 

10.  This paper is instructive on this point: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-015-0552-1.