Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Theresa May lambasts her own record on immigration. Why?

What on earth is Theresa May playing at? As Home Secretary she vowed to cut net immigration down to the ‘tens of thousands,’ only to see it increase to a record high of 330,000. A bit embarrassing: the slogans that used to adorn Tory conferences boasting ‘immigration down’ have been quietly removed, and replied by the fictional achievement ‘deficit eliminated’. If I were her, I’d just drop the whole thing.

Instead, she chooses this conference to inform us that the immigration she has presided over is bad for Britain, bad for our social cohesion. In her words:

‘When immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society. It’s difficult for schools and hospitals and core infrastructure like housing and transport to cope. And we know that for people in low-paid jobs, wages are forced down even further while some people are forced out of work altogether….Britain does not need net migration in the hundreds of thousands every year. The evidence shows that while there are benefits of selective and controlled immigration, at best the net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero. So there is no case, in the national interest, for immigration of the scale we have experienced over the last decade.’

You rather expect a ‘So vote Ukip!’ at the end of this: the Home Secretary is laying into her own record. Even more embarrassingly, the Tories have no plans that lead us to believe that they’ll do any better on immigration: so these problems that Mrs May outlines will get worse.

[datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/JTi0P/index.html”]

Personally, I disagree with her that immigration is such a bad thing – in fact I think it has been a

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in