It should come as no surprise that Keir Starmer has already contracted a severe dose of Boris Johnson disease when it comes to immigration policy.
This occurs when a prime minister has a general commitment to bring down the overall volume of inward migration and yet makes so many specific exceptions that such an outcome becomes impossible.
In Johnson’s case the list of special cases became comically long: Ukrainians, Hong Kongers, Afghans, overseas students and their dependents, social care visas, lower earnings thresholds, not getting round to deporting illegal arrivals to Rwanda or almost anywhere else. As a result net migration rose to levels that led to a ferocious electoral punishment for his party early last month.
Starmer is pinned to a similar immigration pledge to Johnson – to bring it down without specifying by how much. He may figure that he can hardly fail to meet this target given that belated Tory policy decisions mean significant reductions are in the pipeline.
And yet specific measures that push in the other direction are already coming through. The Rwanda scheme that might have proved a significant deterrent against illegal immigration was scrapped immediately. Meanwhile a new influx of Afghans has been announced because, in the words of immigration minister Seema Malhotra: ‘It is our moral duty to ensure that families who were tragically separated are reunited.’ As an overall formula that amounts to a classic invitation to chain migration should it start getting applied more widely.
Now the real biggie is emerging onto the horizon: a potential restoration of free movement with the European Union that would be completely against the spirit of Starmer’s allegedly cast-iron pledge not to bring it back.
We already knew that the Prime Minister spoke to his Spanish opposite number Pedro Sanchez about a new youth mobility scheme in the margins of the Blenheim Palace summit late last month.
Now the Times has been briefed that Labour will give ground on the issue as part of its attempt to reset relations with the EU. A government source told the newspaper: ‘No one will say it publicly at this stage, but there is an acknowledgement that this is an area where we will need to move.’
What seems to be envisaged is a time-limited right to live and work in Britain of perhaps three years for EU nationals under the age of 30. In return UK under 30s could get reciprocal rights in any one specified EU country. And there might even be a limited resumption of UK participation in the Erasmus programme, ensuring that tedious middle class parental dinner party boasting can resume about legions of young Jeremys and Jocelyns being away studying for a year in Madrid or Heidelberg.
Setting a time limit and an age limit on EU nationals permitted to live and work in the UK would allow Starmer to say he had kept to his pledge about not bringing back full freedom of movement.
And yet this will be a distinction without much of a real difference. In the run-up to the Brexit referendum, by far the biggest age group for net inward migration was 20- to 24-year-olds, followed by 25- to 29-year-olds. Free movement was always predominantly a young adult phenomenon. The idea that Britain could succeed in forcibly removing many young Europeans after their three years is laughable. For example, just forging a relationship with a permanent UK resident would be sufficient to lodge a claim to stay under ECHR provisions on the right to a family life.
So how many young Europeans can be expected to come if a deal is agreed? Well, the key factor here is that the EU in general – and southern Europe in particular – still has a very nasty youth unemployment problem. Spain, Greece, Italy, Romania and Portugal are all among countries with youth unemployment rates topping 20 per cent. In Spain’s case the current figure is almost 27 per cent, hence the eagerness of Mr Sanchez to raise the topic.
And as we know, English is the second language of young people across continental Europe and London is the biggest city in Europe exerting a magnetic pull of its own.
The answer then is that huge numbers could come. Starmer could be about to repeat the A8 and A2 enlargement misadventures of Tony Blair, when volumes of likely arrivals were massively under-estimated.
All the toxins would be back in the body politic: even faster escalating rental costs and house prices, downward pressure on pay in semi-skilled and unskilled occupations, further dilution of the national capital stock, and an even more widespread sense of betrayal among the public.
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