They call it the Boriswave. The word of the moment. The shiny new soundbite pumped out by Labour and parroted by Nigel Farage’s cheerleaders.
A neat way to pretend that Britain’s migration surge in 2022–23 was uniquely Boris Johnson’s fault. It isn’t. It never was. And those who keep shouting it know exactly what they’re doing.
They are lying to you.
Here’s the truth: Britain did not stand alone. Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, the United States… virtually every major developed country experienced record-breaking immigration at the same time. Read Tom Harwood’s excellent Substack all about it.
A Bidenwave. A Macronwave. A Scholzwave. An Albowave. Even a Kishidawave. Call it what you like, but it wasn’t just Boris. It was a global surge, triggered by post-Covid labour shortages, inflation fears, and refugee crises. Governments everywhere opened the taps, and they all got drenched.
But do Labour or Reform tell you this? Of course not. They whisper “Boriswave” to make Boris the scapegoat… because they fear him. They fear his return. They fear the one man who has proven, time and again, that he can connect with the public in a way they never will.
And let’s recall a fact deliberately airbrushed from the narrative: in Boris Johnson’s first year as Prime Minister, the UK recorded the lowest immigration in 75 years. Yes, you read that right. Lower than May. Lower than Cameron. Lower than Blair. Does that sound like the man who wanted open borders?
No, what happened later was not Boris’s grand design to “flood Britain.” It was a global groupthink moment. Civil servants, economists, and international institutions flogged the same playbook to every government: import workers and prop up the economy. It was “human quantitative easing.” And Boris, like Biden, Macron, Scholz, and Kishida, was caught in the tide.
But if Reform admitted that, they’d lose their favourite stick to beat him with. So they spin. They shout Boriswave. They want him erased from the picture.
The facts remain: under the Conservatives, work visas were meant to be temporary. Seasonal Worker Visas – six months in the fields, then home. Skilled Worker Visas – five years tied to a job, no automatic right to settle. Emergency HGV Driver Visas – short-term fixes, not pipelines. Even the BN(O) visa for Hong Kong was a moral stand against Beijing, not a mass-migration free-for-all.
Boris never designed a system of one-way tickets. Labour and their lefty lawyer allies did that, by dismantling deterrents, blocking deportation flights, killing Rwanda, voting against stopping the boats (over 130 times!), and turning temporary visas into permanent settlement. They’re the ones who quietly converted work permits into migration pipelines.
And remember, during his premiership, Boris was battling Brexit gridlock, a once-in-a-century pandemic, and a war in Europe, all while being stalked by hijackers in his own party and a Migration Advisory Committee that never faced proper scrutiny. And still, in year one, he delivered record-low immigration.
Which brings us to Reform’s nightmare scenario: what if Boris comes back? What if the Conservatives strike a deal with someone like Ben Habib, yes, Reform’s former deputy leader, now building his own party, and cut into Nigel’s flank? Imagine Reform squeezed from both sides. Imagine a Johnson with Badenoch / Jenrick and Habib pact dragging the Tories back from the abyss.
Stranger things have happened.
The Boris comeback isn’t fantasy. It’s the unspoken fear in Nigel’s camp and Labour’s war room. That’s why they cling to the Boriswave slogan like a toddler clutching a comfort blanket. But the public aren’t mugs. They know spin when they see it. Or they will do.
The truth is this: Boris wasn’t the wave. He was swept along like every other global leader. And tides, my friends, turn.
The next few years will be very, very interesting indeed. Keep your eyes on the data, the polls, the trendlines. By 2027 and 2028, the picture could look nothing like today’s headlines.
By Claire Bullivant
Read more about the “Boriswave” lie on Tom Harwood’s Substack.
