Keir Starmer appeared to be making all the right noises when he unveiled his immigration crackdown this week. The white paper, released to coincide with the Prime Minister’s speech on Monday, saw the government finally concede a basic economic fact we all know to be true: ‘Despite the significant increases in long-term migration over recent years, economic growth and living standards have stagnated.’
However, on close inspection the paper is not all that it seems. Fundamentally, it simply lacks detail. It fails to set any targets, either in terms of net migration numbers or visas, and offers little clarity on what would be deemed the right amount of migration.
This is no accidental omission. These plans make clear that the solution to Britain’s immigration crises will not be resolved by ministers or directly by the Home Office, but by Keir Starmer’s favourite answer to any public issue: the quango.
Quangos are threaded through every page of this paper.
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