Of Boris Johnson’s many broken promises, his failure to “take back control” of post-Brexit immigration is the one that Tory MPs believe matters most to their voters.
Johnson has long fled the scene – Rishi Sunak is instead getting the blame from his New Conservative backbenchers who predict they will be punished at the ballot box in the “red wall” of the north and Midlands.
The former prime minister’s battlecry of “getting Brexit done” at the 2019 election went hand-in-hand with a manifesto promise to reduce levels of net migration from what was about 245,000 a year.
A tough “points-based immigration system” was going to be brought in by the then home secretary, Priti Patel, and supposedly allow the UK rather than Brussels to have control of the numbers.
And yet the latest net migration figures of almost 750,000 for 2022 show that far from decreasing, net migration has gone up threefold. Many economists believe this level of migration is necessary and the natural consequence of a country facing staff shortages and high domestic wages.
But the political reality for Sunak is dire. While Liz Truss trashed the Conservative party’s traditional claims to run a steady economy, the prime minister will now also be unable to state at an election that his is the party of tough controls on migration.
His tactic has so far been to turn people’s attention to the problem of people crossing in small boats, claiming his scheme to deport those who have entered the country illegally to Rwanda is being thwarted by the courts.
But, in fact, the bulk of migration has come from student, work and family visa routes, particularly those in the health and social care sector, as well as legal asylum channels from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong.
Sunak is looking at ways to restrict family members being brought to the UK and raise the required salaries for new arrivals on employment visas. But the measures could risk further staff shortages in critical sectors, causing further wage inflation and damaging the economy just before an election.
As Sunder Katwala, the director of thinktank British Future, says: “Rishi Sunak isn’t going to make the deep and rapid cuts that some are proposing because doing so would throw off-course what he wants to do on NHS waiting lists, economic growth and taxation.”
His only strategy is to continue pinning the blame on “illegal” migration – and if the pressure from the Tory right becomes too great, he has the nuclear option of an election promise to withdraw from the European convention on human rights (ECHR).
There is mixed evidence on how much the public prioritises immigration as an issue after Brexit, in the middle of a cost of living crisis and when the NHS is struggling. But surveys generally show it is a much stronger issue for Conservative voters, who Sunak needs to motivate, and Labour’s Keir Starmer wants to win over.
It is highly debatable whether leaving the ECHR would help Sunak bring in his Rwanda plan but there may come a point at which he feels an election based on this issue – like Johnson’s 2019 contest centred on Brexit and the people versus the establishment – is his best hope. Part of the motivation would be to help neutralise a threat from the Reform party on the right, possibly backed by a resurgent Nigel Farage.
However, concentrating on immigration would still be a risky move. Labour would not back a departure from the ECHR or the Rwanda plan, but there is no chance Starmer’s party will let Sunak and the Tories escape the reality that net migration has trebled under the Tories.
