Part 6/16:

The discussion highlights decades of policy failures and naivety in managing migration. The early 2000s, especially under New Labour and Tony Blair’s government, saw migration levels rise sharply, contrary to prior promises of controlled migration. Notably, the expansion of EU membership and the removal of restrictions on countries like Romania and Bulgaria elicited large surges of arrivals. For example, Romanian migration increased from around 90,000 to over half a million, while total migration figures soared from tens of thousands annually to hundreds of thousands.