British here. You’re right. It’s the culmination of decades of intentional misinformation and stoking the fears of the racist and stupid. Appealing to the politicians spreading this (e.g. Farage) is useless. Appealing to the public is useless.

I heard a story about a friend of a friend who thought that one million immigrants entered Britain every day. As in, the population would literally double in two months if this was true. But not only did he not realise that, he repeated the “fact” to other people.

Obviously a lot of us are fine. But Reform is leading in the polls and people believe shit like that so the reality is most of us are not.