It was Rishi Sunak, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick who took the measures that led to this morning’s dramatic figures showing that net immigration halved last year. But it will be Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and Angela Rayner who take the credit.
First, though, we should deal with the reasonable objection that this assumes that immigration of 860,000 a year is a bad thing, and that 431,000 is a better thing. That shouldn’t be controversial. Adding the equivalent of a city the size of Edinburgh to the population every year is unlikely to improve the quality of life for existing residents, whatever it might do to GDP. It is not surprising that 95 per cent of British people say that the “ideal” level of net immigration is below 500,000 a year.
