Will Labour fall into the migration trap?

Brexit was the issue that won the last general election for the Tories but botching it may well lose them the next. The Red Wall was attracted by the promise that after sovereignty was wrested back from Brussels, the UK would be able to control its immigration policy and employers would have to pay their workers more.

Instead, net immigration – the legal kind, nothing to do with small boats – hit 745,000 in 2022. This is double pre-Brexit levels and far higher than the government expected. No one knew quite how the new visa toolkit would work, and ministers are now scrambling to curb numbers. Higher salary thresholds have been imposed and rules on bringing over dependants have been tightened. The quarterly immigration figures published next week will be vital to Sunak’s claim to be making progress.

Labour has the inverse problem to the Tories: the leadership is more migrant sceptic than its backbenchers

Asylum claims fell by about a third over the course of last year, with an even faster drop for health and social care visas. After peaking at 18,300 a month the summer before last, these had collapsed to 2,400 last month. This strategy may leave the NHS depleted and universities howling at a drop in foreign students paying higher fees, but right now many Tories remain indifferent. ‘I wouldn’t give a damn if ten mediocre universities dependent on dodgy visas collapsed,’ says one former cabinet minister.

James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, has promised ‘the biggest ever cut in net migration’. He’s keen to stress that the UK’s Rwanda scheme is closely in line with mainstream European opinion. Just last week, Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats, said that Britain’s Rwanda plan is ‘something we can emulate’. ‘It’s a long way from the open borders of 2015,’ remarks one minister.