Mass migration will see the population of the United Kingdom rise faster than any country in the European Union this century as the sheer number of arrivals will overpower what could otherwise be a return to more manageable 1950s-levels of people in the nation.
Projections by the United Nations puts the United Kingdom at the top of the table for population growth among major European countries by the year 2100, predicting the nation will see a 6.8 per cent rise from 69.6 million to 74 million by the end of the century.
Practically all population growth in the United Kingdom this century so far has been down to new arrivals, and in recent years natural population growth has ended as more people die than are born. An opportunity to rectify the country’s roaring property price crisis and shortage of infrastructure will be passed over however, assuming the United Nation’s projection that the country’s borders will remain comprehensively open to all-comers comes to pass.
Should the UK change course on immigration and impose a pause for the rest of the century, reports The Daily Telegraph, the population of the United Kingdom could fall to 50 million — which is what it was in 1950, amid the baby boom after the Second World War — by year 2100.
This prediction is based on the assumption, however, that a suspension of new foreign arrivals relieving the massive upward pressure of demand on the housing market wouldn’t make family life more affordable, and that in turn wouldn’t have an impact on the country’s plummeting fertility rates, however.
In all, the predicted net inflow of migrants modelled by the European Union is an extra 14.3 million — the gross figure would be considerably higher, given the balance of Britons leaving the country, accelerating the rate of demographic change — over the next 75 years. This is higher than France and Germany, and per the report of the major European states predicted to experience net population growth by 2100 are the UK, France, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Going by other recent studies and government statistical releases, if anything the United Nations prediction for UK population growth for the remainder of this century appears to be very modest. The U.N. report states the UK population will rise just four million in the next 75 years, while the Office for National Statistics (ONS) projected earlier this year that the country would see all that growth in just the next 15 years.
Further, all of these projections have built-in compounding errors given nobody knows how many people are actually in the country now, never mind in 75 years time.
Further throwing into question whether the United Nations projection of 14.3 million net migrant arrivals for the next 75 years is a new report stating the population of the United Kingdom has already increased by 9 million in the 25 years of this century so far.
The Daily Mail reports Conservative peer Robin Hodgson and Labour Lord Maurice Glasman — the power behind the so-called ‘Blue Labour’ movement who has long been sounding the alarm on migration levels — called the 21st century so far “‘the most rapid [population] increase in our nation’s history” and called for action. Lord Hodgson said: “If we don’t start putting plans in place now, the problems we face later will be far harder to solve.”
Lord Glasman added: “Issues of demography and immigration have disfigured our public debates for too long. The general public is clearly looking for ways to address these challenges.”
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