Control of immigration, relations with Europe and devolution of powers to Scotland are issues at the centre of British political debate. But, mostly, people who think there are too many immigrants, or that too much power has been ceded to Brussels or too little devolved to Edinburgh, do not have specific policy proposals in mind.
By and large they have little idea how many migrants are in the country. When Ipsos Mori asked respondents to estimate the proportion of UK residents who are foreign born, the average of answers was 31 per cent (the true figure is 13 per cent, of whom almost half are students). Concern about immigration is greatest not in London, where there are many immigrants, but in rural areas, where there are few. Clacton, where the anti-EU UK Independence party won a parliamentary seat earlier this month, has a lower than average proportion of immigrants but a high proportion of elderly people born in the UK. Many people think that immigration is a national problem but few think that it is one that affects their locality.
Most people find it easier to dislike abstractions than real people. My aunt was always scrupulous in exempting from her blanket condemnation of Pakistanis the only one she had ever met (he was actually Indian, but never mind).