Same reason as always: Wealthy people want less taxes, more power, and will lobby for the parties that always promise less taxes: Those on the right.

The problem is that the conservative and traditional right aren't too popular, so they need to go for the far-right. Those parties are in full MAGA-mode, focusing on things like immigration. It is so, so much easier to sway public opinion by blowing up incidents involving immigrants, than to convince the public that they should accept reduction or degradation of services due to tax cuts.

Far-right politicians discovered some time ago that they can straight up lie through their teeth, and face zero consequences. And those lies will propagate through social media, and people will accept them as facts.

It seems like critical thinking among huge parts of the population is considerably down. I've heard seemingly smart people I know regurgitate lies they've picked up on social media, which they could have fact checked in 30 seconds.

I find it crazy how the establishment will consider absolutely anything other than that Brits are legitimately fed up with immigration.

As a brit, I can confirm I am not at all fed up with immigration. The only person I know who is, cannot articulate his position beyond he just feels like he doesn't like immigrants. He's been a lot less vocal about it since the people he was saying would destroy the country if they got into power were the same party who solved his migrant boat problem.

There's being fed up with something and there's fomenting civil war. The huge wave of immigration, which has since subsided, happened under the Tories.

Who/what is the "establishment"?

That seems like an inadequate explanation of why Elon Musk, who is not a Brit, is investing so much time and energy into this issue.

As an American, I can assure you that policy issues and corporate meddling are in fact not mutually exclusive.

Simple answer is power, look at how things have changed since Musk bought the largest communication platform on the planet. Look at who's backing him and what they want.

The UK's stance goes right against the values and goals these billionaires want and that's basically to do whatever they want without recourse. What better way to sow diversion than to stoke civil unrest and cause change to the systems that stand in their way.

I'm sure it's about power. I am also sure that having that much wealth, that little accountability, being surrounded by people who've a vested interest in telling you you're a genius, would make anyone go a little insane. Call it Roman Emperor syndrome. Not many people can be Marcus Aurelius.

The whole reason the British government pushed Brexit was so Britain could control its immigration. That's how Brexit was presented to the population, that's why people voted for it. Then the government got Brexit, and then Boris Johnson more than tripled immigration, chasing away EU immigration and getting all the immigrants from the (very coincidentally very low-wage Pakistan, I mean there aren't very many countries anywhere that have lower average wages than Greece)

https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/12/30/how-the-take-ba... ( https://archive.ph/krvMU )

Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on. And the central UK government forced small towns, cities and the like into bankruptcy. Now, in the UK, things like social support are financed by municipalities EXCEPT when it comes to immigrants. So, effectively, the government massively increased immigration, reduced social support and raised taxes on everybody except immigrants.

Then the government blamed very large youth services scandals, like the Rotherham scandal, on immigrants. This, despite the fact that these children had been taken from their homes by youth services and were under their custody AND despite the fact that youth services AND the police have been credibly accused of taking payoffs. Those people were definitely not immigrants, but they did not feature in the court proceedings "for some reason".

So government causes, to varying extents, large social problems. It ostensibly saves immigrants from these problems, and then the government itself blames immigrants for problems the government caused.

The problem here is not Twitter. I mean, they're not helping. But they're not the problem.

Regardless of whether you're correct, that wasn't the subject of the article.

It's implied by the article that there wouldn't be much opposition to immigration without big tech. That isn't true if there is widespread opposition to immigration anyway and the government broke its promise about dealing with it.

37% of the voting population voted for Brexit, it wasn't anywhere near a majority.

>The whole reason the British government pushed Brexit was so Britain could control its immigration. That's how Brexit was presented to the population, that's why people voted for it.

>Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on.

These two things might be connected. It's almost like Brexit caused a series of large social problems.

Brexit promised a solution just like loads of solutions had been promised within the EU framework prior to it - all these "solutions" were akin in that they were all promised (from left and right within the political establishment) and all not delivered. This is also why people seek to go outside the regular voting pattern with Reform, it's not cause they suddenly love something completely different but because the former voting pattern did not deliver improvements as expected.

The comments on the FT are rarely worth reading even though you need top be a subscriber to comment.

Comments being used as measure of 'public sentiment' is one of the ways perception is being manipulated by big tech in the first place.

In the archived version (linked elsewhere) there is a sea of negative comments within ~55 minutes of the article being posted, I seriously doubt a large percentage of them are legitimate (all of them doing the same routine, telling the exact same lines and stories).