It’s a fair question. Probably a bit of both. Politicians can’t solve everything but can at least try to address some concerns/issues that flow from globalisation. On the flip side, we as populations, can’t expect all the benefits and none of the negatives
The problem with immigration as I said before is that no one wants the details. There’s a group who are happy to tank higher education in exchange but not a majority, same with care costs (and often two opposing groups younger don’t want to tank uni older don’t want to tank care), everyone you speak to (and I’ve got a fair few friends for whom this is their number one political priority) wants to stop “the illegals and those claiming benefits and not working” but they aren’t a significant group of you want numbers down overall.
That’s why the Tories have focused on small boats, because they’re the one group everyone can agree should be stopped. But they’re a tiny proportion of the overall numbers and really hard to actually stop completely.
So if you’re a politician working in good faith to address these concerns there’s very few levers you can actually pull because a lot of what you’re fighting against is memes about immigrants being given free houses or whatever.
I do think the one policy lever that hasn’t been pulled is ID cards and a big crackdown on the black economy. But a lot of the same people are staunchly anti authoritarian and don’t want to have a card themselves or have the taxman pay closer attention to the cash in hand economy.