How Cameron’s jobs miracle ate his immigration target

The embarrassing truth is that David Cameron did not think carefully about this pledge to take net immigration into the ‘tens of thousands’. The pledge originated in a Thick-of-It style farce: it was an aspiration mentioned by Damian Green, then immigration spokesman, that caught media attention. The Tories didn’t want to make a fuss by disowning it, so this pledge ended up becoming party policy and then government policy. Absurdly so: a country can only control who comes in, not who goes out. So immigration, not ‘net immigration’, should have been the target. And even then, it should have been immigration from outside the EU – which Theresa May has done a reasonable job controlling.

But the not-so-embarrassing truth is that this is a problem of success. The Tories were empty-chaired by BBC Daily Politics on immigration – but why didn’t they send someone? Why hide? They just needed to say that Britain is creating more jobs than the rest of Europe put together.