Rishi Sunak has been urged to promise a referendum on slashing immigration in a bid to win the next general election.
Professor Matt Goodwin called on the Prime Minister to offer a national ballot on bringing down net migration to around 100,000 within six months if he remains in No 10.
Readers can vote in our online poll on whether you think Mr Sunak should go ahead with the move.
In an open letter on his Substack, the leading academic said: “You offer the British people – once and for all – the chance to have their say on the one issue they care very deeply about, feel very unhappy about, and want to change.
“You offer the country a once-in-a-lifetime, historic opportunity to have a say on the issue which for more than half a century has been kept off the table by out-of-touch politicians and a new elite who are not interested in representing the values and voice of ordinary people.”
The author of Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics argued that the offer of a referendum on immigration would demonstrate Mr Sunak “genuinely understands what Brexit was about” and help win back disillusioned 2019 Tory voters.
He said: “Only by making this radical offer, only by promising a referendum on reducing mass immigration, will you not only pull off one of the biggest shocks in history but do something else that is much more important — you will strengthen the country, you will unite a large majority of people behind you, and you will show them that a different kind of politics is not just desirable but entirely possible.
“This is the only card you have left to play. Only you can decide whether you want to play it or, instead, lead your party to one of the biggest defeats in its history and the country into an ongoing crisis which we all know will only worsen under future Labour governments.”
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Mr Sunak has been under pressure from Tory MPs to cut the number of people legally arriving in Britain since revised official estimates showed the net figure – the difference between those arriving and leaving – reached a record 745,000 in 2022.
A raft of restrictions will come into force within weeks in a bid to bring down net migration.
It comes as the Tories are trailing behind Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party by around 20 points in opinion polls.
