How to balance immigration and jobs

Immigration is now at the top of the political agenda in a way that it hasn’t been since the vote to leave the European Union in 2016. Two factors have propelled it up the list, one very real (the small boats arriving across the Channel) and the other theoretical (economic modelling).

The market reaction to Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget made the Office for Budget Responsibility’s next forecast all the more important. In an attempt to increase economic growth, Liz Truss wanted to formalise a more liberal immigration policy. She wanted to show the OBR that her policies would produce decent growth, but her tax cuts would not be enough to do this. So she thought more immigration would help to increase GDP figures, as it had in the Labour years.  

Suella Braverman, Truss’s first Home Secretary, fought against the plan which she regarded as a betrayal of the Tories’ 2019 manifesto commitment to reduce immigration.