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Sir Keir Starmer was right to call out the Tories for their abject failure over 14 years to control and reduce immigration, as they had repeatedly promised to do. But what is he going to do about it? Where was the plan for reducing net migration, now hovering at around three quarters of a million? Has it really fallen from 906,000, the revised figure for 2023? We are not convinced it has. There’s a plan for the NHS, the police, protection of energy billpayers (whatever that may mean), and more. 1.5 million more homes will be built in the lifetime of this parliament. And there are milestones to measure progress. But nothing about immigration. The issue that has consistently been at the top or very near the top of public concern merits zero attention. When asked why there wasn’t a plan, target or milestone for immigration, the PM might as well have said, “There isn’t because I know we’ll fail, and you’ll only keep banging on about it.”
Incidentally Prime Minister, you’d better get your skates on if you want to build 300,000 homes a year in the lifetime of this parliament because the net migration of 2022 and 2023 (1.66m) alone will take up the first lot of 300,000 homes that go up. In fact, you’ll need more. As for reducing NHS queues, good luck with that one. Let’s hope the extra cash going in will be enough to deal with existing demand, let alone the mass of people still to come.
We wouldn’t have expected the Prime Minister to credit the Tories with what they got right, as in the early years of the Coalition, but he might look at what worked; to see how Theresa May as Home Secretary, reduced net migration from about 250,000 in 2010 to about 160,000 in 2012 despite opposition from most of her cabinet colleagues. We wrote about this in 2014.
The Tories’ biggest mistake, and what must be addressed if net migration is to be reduced, followed the 2019 election when Boris Johnson introduced the scandalously loose points-based system; sold to the public as the way both to control immigration and reduce it. It was a con; they knew it would do neither. All it did was usher in the cheaper labour big business was after. We warned the government over and over that this would happen. Here’s what we said in a 2018 article for TCW by (Lord) Andrew Green, when the post-Brexit system was being discussed. It was clear to us that the government’s intention was to replicate free movement, opening it up to the whole world.
Regarding international students, The Conservatives caved in to the universities and student lobbies and set a target of recruiting 600,000 international students in higher education by 2030. The universities were given a free hand to recruit as many students as they wanted. In mid-2021, the two-year post-study work route was re-introduced, replacing the four-month period brought in by the Coalition in 2012. By 2020/2021, over 600,000 overseas students enrolled, nine years sooner than scheduled. An army of young people was a gift for the gig economy. (Here’s something else we wrote on this).
The Conservatives didn’t lose control of immigration – they gave it away. However, their mistakes and ultimate fate at the hands of the electorate should serve as a salutary reminder to Sir Keir Starmer of what needs to be done. So far, he has done little more than blame the Tories for the dire situation we are in. But he can’t go on just telling us that the previous administration screwed up and abandoning the policies that don’t go with the Starmer narrative, such as it is, without putting in place policies that would have the necessary effect. He and his Home Secretary have to get a grip of immigration and come up with the right policies to reduce it sharply. A cap is essential. Sir Keir has dismissed the idea of a cap as a policy that failed. It actually worked when the Tories introduced one for high-skill visas in 2011. It is the only way that significant reductions will be achieved. So, no new policy to tackle out of control legal migration and one that lacks credibility on illegal migration. Repeatedly uttering the vacuous slogan, “smash the gangs”, won’t stop the boats.
As things are, the scale of migration, legal and illegal, will undermine all Labour’s plans, as well as ensure their defeat come the next general election
This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every week as soon as it is released.