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. Her vision for Brexit involved growing the economy by making better use of the domestic workforce rather than importing so much labour. As she mulled how to respond to Truss’s demands, she sent government documents from her personal phone to a backbench ally and, by mistake, someone else. This was a breach of the ministerial code and she was forced to resign.

We have a new Prime Minister, but the arguments over immigration show no sign of going away. Braverman’s return to the Home Office has intensified the row over the circumstances surrounding her resignation from the Truss government. Her return raises other questions around immigration too. Should the Tories target GDP, or should the target be GDP per capita?

At the same time, the small boats situation has become more serious. A thousand people arrived last Saturday alone, more than crossed the Channel in the first seven months of 2019.