Immigration

How much do the net migration figures mean these days? The Office for National Statistics released its latest migration estimates today, which put immigration to the UK in the year to June 2016 at a record high of 650,000 – up 11,000 on the previous year. Net migration was at 335,000. That figure comprises 189,000 EU citizens and 196,000 non-EU citizens who came to Britain, and 49,000 Brits who left this country. But these figures mostly cover the period before the EU referendum. The ONS includes three months of data following June’s vote in today’s release. And the estimates for the year that follows will also reflect Britain’s current immigration

One of the crueller caricatures in the 2004 satirical film ‘Team America: World Police’ is a little puppet of Matt Damon who is only able to say ‘Matt Damon’ in a rather feeble and pointless fashion. The actor himself felt he was being cruelly parodied because of his opposition to the Iraq War, and was ‘bewildered’ by the suggestion that he was barely able to say his own name when he was able to learn entire scripts. But the point from the screenwriters seemed to be that beyond his own name, Damon wasn’t really offering anything to the debate about the war. Labour has a Matt Damon problem on immigration

When a Prime Minister flies off abroad with a few business-leaders it is seldom worthy of comment. Such trade missions tend to achieve little, beyond generating headlines intended to flaunt politicians’ pro-business credentials. But with the impending departure of Britain from the European Union,-Theresa May’s visit to India this week, accompanied by Sir James Dyson and others, has huge significance. For the first time in four decades, a British Prime Minister can discuss doing trade deals — something which we have until now been forced to contract out to officials in Brussels. Mrs May chose her destination shrewdly. With its rapidly expanding economy and the gradual liberalisation of economic policy, India

Jeremy Corbyn is taking Labour ever further away from its traditional working class voters in the north and the midlands. As I say in The Sun today, the party now has a leader who didn’t sing the national anthem at St Paul’s, a shadow Chancellor who has praised the IRA, a shadow Home Secretary who thinks promising ‘controls on immigration’ is shameful and a shadow Foreign Secretary who sneers at those who fly the English flag. This presents Ukip with an open goal and a chance to do to Labour in the north and the midlands what the SNP did to in Scotland following the independence referendum. Indeed, half of

The Conservative party conference in Birmingham this week seemed a remarkably relaxed affair. The European question has been settled. Seldom has victory in the next-election looked more secure. The Labour conference in Liverpool had been a debacle, as the hard left set about picking off the remaining moderates. Diane James has resigned as Ukip leader after 18 days. It’s quite possible that her replacement could transform Ukip into a new working-class party — and then do to Labour in the north of England what the SNP has done to it in Scotland. One cabinet member put it well: the Tory party, he said, was like a piece of elastic that

Why has ‘trust’ became such a dominant issue in British politics in the early 21st century? Is it the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Or the arrogant ineptitude that led to the financial crisis and the bank bailouts? Or the parliamentary expenses scandal? Or is it, more than the above, the failure of successive governments to meet their immigration targets? Trust in politics will fall to dangerously low levels if-immigration continues as is following this year’s referendum. This is why the government has acknowledged that some control over EU immigration must be part of the Brexit deal. The extent of these restrictions will be key to