The morning after my wife and I slept out to raise money for Action for Children — cold, tired, but quietly proud to have helped tackle youth homelessness — we treated ourselves to a well-earned breakfast in town.
On the walk back, I was handed a Reform Party leaflet.
The top three points, from hazy memory:
Stop the Boats. Immigration. Net Zero.
So I asked, politely and out of genuine curiosity:
• Roughly how many asylum seekers have come to Britain in the last five years?
• What percentage have been granted asylum under the rules?
• And what’s happened to the rest?
He didn’t know. Not even roughly.
Instead, he kept asking me to answer my own questions.
I said that if these were the party’s top priorities, surely a campaigner should have some basic data.
When I pointed out that net migration has actually fallen sharply since June 2023 — down from a record high of around 906,000 to 431,000 in the most recent ONS figures — there was silence.
Yes, migration levels are still high, and nobody serious disputes that. But the evidence shows it is being addressed, with changes to work and study visas already cutting numbers by more than half.
His only reply: “One is too many.”
Then came: “You’re arrogant.”
And off he walked.
Maybe my data was wrong? I’m happy to be checked on this but to default to ‘one is too many’, made me think we weren’t going to have a fact based discussion.
On the way home, I found myself wondering: Was I?
Was I subconsciously looking for an argument — a little moral high ground after a good deed?
If it had been Labour, would I have asked about tax pledges?
Lib Dems (who run my ward), about the crater of hole in the road, right outside my front door?
The Conservatives… well, that list might take a while.
Maybe I was just tired and curious.
Or maybe that tiny spark of confrontation is part of what keeps democracy alive — the willingness to test the slogans we’re sold.
A recent ScienceDirect paper on climate change and populism describes something called “total denial” — not the loud rejection of science, but the quiet refusal to engage with complexity.
It studied environmental issues, not immigration, but the pattern is the same: emotion over evidence, and the habit of labelling curiosity as arrogance.
Perhaps both of us were guilty of something that morning:
me of asking too much, him of wanting to know too little.
Either way, it was a reminder that democracy only works when both sides of a conversation stay open — when we can question, listen, and think without fear of being called arrogant for caring about the facts.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030147972503720X