The UK has pursued a policy of “vigorous assimilation” with mass immigration in recent years and the country should consider “turning off the tap”, political commentator John O’Sullivan has claimed.

Immigration is one of the key reasons behind the Tories’ devastating loss at the General Election, it has been claimed.

Former minister Robert Jenrick is one to have cited the issue, telling the BBC that Nigel Farage’s Reform winning a hefty portion of the vote share is evidence that migration “was at the heart” of the Tory defeat.

Speaking on GB News, O’Sullivan warned of the troubling ramifications of mass migration.

“We now have the experiment of large numbers of people from different cultures, including cultures of the Middle East arriving”, he said.

“They are no longer one or two per cent. They are sort of six per cent and rising.

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“If you look at the numbers of people born in the major city hospitals, the new arrivals considered collectively are something like a third to a half of the people there.

“What does that mean? It means we are going to be living for the rest of our lives and longer than mine, with people who have different habits and customs and who may have grievances.

“They’re our permanent neighbours and we have to find a way of living together with them and working together. We have to be very careful about what we do.

“We don’t want to think of other citizens as doomed to be our enemies as some are our enemies. We have to find a way of dealing with them. We have to find a way of ensuring that they are assimilated into society.

“A lot of left-wingers don’t like that idea, they’re going to have to come to terms with reality.”

He added: “If you don’t turn off the tap, you are bringing in more people who will, so to speak, augment the pressures that divide society. I don’t say this is easy, it isn’t.”

The Tories lost seats and votes to Reform UK with Nigel Farage’s party proposing a freeze on non-essential immigration.

The former UKIP chief blamed immigration for NHS waiting lists and the housing crisis, saying other parties “would rather not discuss it”.

The Tories have been reduced to just 121 seats in the process, which former Home Secretary Suella Braverman put down to an “idiotic strategy”.

Labour were able to take advantage of Tory woes, winning a hefty 412 seats, a majority of 174.