Dr Maria Kyriakidou
Reader at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of audience studies and globalisation, with a particular focus on the mediation of global crises, including humanitarian news and disinformation.
Dr Iñaki Garcia-Blanco
Senior Lecturer at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture (Cardiff University). Director of Learning and Teaching.
Email: garcia-blancoi@cardiff.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 7: News and journalism
73. Why the press still matters (Prof Steven Barnett)
74. When the Star aligned: how the press ‘voted’ (Prof Dominic Wring, Prof David Deacon)
75. Visual depictions of leaders and losers in the (still influential) print press (Prof Erik Bucy)
76. Towards more assertive impartiality? Fact-checking on BBC television news (Prof Stephen Cushion)
77. The outsize influence of the conservative press in election campaigns (Prof Dan Stevens, Prof Susan Banducci, Prof Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Dr Laszlo Horvath)
78. GB News – not breaking any rules… (Prof Ivor Gaber)
79. Vogue’s stylish relationship to politics (Dr Chrysi Dagoula)
80. Tiptoeing around immigration has tangible consequences (Dr Maria Kyriakidou, Dr Iñaki Garcia-Blanco)
81. A Taxing Campaign (Prof David Deacon et al)
82. Not the Sun wot won it: what Murdoch’s half-hearted, last-minute endorsements mean for Labour (Dr John Jewell)
83. Is this the first podcast election? (Carl Hartley, Prof Stephen Coleman)
84. A numbers game (Prof Paul Bradshaw)
85. Election 2024 and the remarkable absence of media in a mediated spectacle (Prof Lee Edwards)
86. 2024: the great election turn-off (Prof Des Freedman)
Despite the centrality of immigration in British political debates since the early 2000s, and the key role this debate played during the EU referendum campaign, coverage of immigration was relatively low-key during the 2024 Election. But this is not to say the topic was absent from the media during the six-week campaign. Whilst the Rwanda scheme spearheaded the Tory government’s immigration policy over the preceding months–if not years–to the extent that it had been turned into one of the five pledges Sunak’s premiership should be held accountable for, the failures of the plan and the alternatives suggested in party manifestos were–surprisingly–seldomly discussed. We believe this is a symptom of the way immigration is more broadly dealt with by politicians and the media in the UK.
From a strategic point of view, there was little incentive for the main candidates to discuss immigration. In a textbook case of political parallelism, most media outlets–with the exception of the most vociferous tabloids–sang from the same hymn sheet as their preferred candidates, and only tangentially discussed immigration during the campaign. While the two main political leaders tiptoed around this issue, the media’s discrete coverage of a topic that had been focal until that point meant space was left for populist, far-right voices to take over the debate.
The Rwanda scheme and immigration overall were key questions in the immediate aftermath of Rishi Sunak’s announcement of election. What would happen with the already delayed flights before the election and, especially, after a possible Labour win, were issues addressed by the media. As anticipated, they were also discussed in televised Leaders’ debates. However, it was the discussion on taxes that virtually monopolised the attention of the media afterwards. Even when the Guardian revealed the Rwanda plan had already cost £320m that would be lost if the Conservatives left Government, the story did not make headlines–and it was indeed under ‘World’ news and the section on ‘Africa’ in the newspaper itself. The lack of media interest in this political fiasco, of course, means failure to hold the Tory government accountable for a huge mistake.
Most importantly, however, this further allowed populist extreme voices, such as Nigel Farage and the Reform party, as well as the tabloid press, to frame the immigration debate within familiar xenophobic frameworks. When Farage announced his decision to run with the anti-immigration Reform party on the 3rd June, he did so by declaring this should be the ‘immigration election’. His announcement dominated all the front pages in national newspapers. The Telegraph published a column where Farage himself justified his decision to stand because of the main parties’ failure to tackle immigration. His attack on other parties’ immigration policies in the televised debate a few days later were secondary in media coverage that largely focused on Rishi Sunak’s apology for leaving the D-day ceremony early.
The combination of the main parties’ quiet stance on immigration and the media’s infatuation with Nigel Farage’s persona somehow reflected–and amplified–Farage’s arguments in the tabloids, such as the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Express (as well as the Telegraph, which on immigration performed like a tabloid in all but format) which continued their xenophobic attacks against immigrants and asylum seekers. In some cases, coverage made links to Brexit and the EU border, a favourite trope of the tabloids before the 2016 EU referendum, especially after Boris Johnson joined the Tory campaign.
The failure by other media and politicians to challenge such coverage means the immigration debate will be left to fester, as it already has over the last decades. Even when immigration did make the news beyond the tabloids during the election campaign, the discussion was still set according to their populist and xenophobic terms. It largely focused on numbers, questioning whether the number of small boats had indeed decreased, as Sunak claimed, the increase in net migration, or how many migrants were still expected to cross the Channel.
This largely dehumanising coverage has perpetuated the sense of a threatening invasion that was a major trigger for the Brexit vote and has never been put to rest since. At the same time, this coverage has failed to reflect on the centrality of foreign staff in key sectors of the economy, such as the care industry or the building sector, and the economic fallout of a crackdown on immigration as promised by all political leaders. Whenever it was covered, regardless of the outlet and its political allegiance, immigration and immigrants were presented as a problem, and coverage failed to consider the problems of immigrants.
This limited view of immigration, the disproportionate focus on Nigel Farage during the campaign and the failure to challenge the agenda set up by politicians have proven that no lessons have been learnt by the British media since the Brexit vote. This is by no means surprising. It marks, however, another missed opportunity to reframe the immigration debate in the UK.
