Immigration policy can ‘swamp’ a party’s message. But Cameron knows this

Cameron enters the immigration debate

The government’s failure to count up the number of foreign workers in this country rightly reinforces the public’s fear that control of the borders has been lost, that an unstoppable tide of migrants is flowing into the country. It is in these circumstances that unsavoury politics flourish.

To Gordon Brown’s immense discredit, he has expended more energy trying to capitalise on public disquiet over immigration than on trying to fix the problem. So Mr Brown talks of ‘British jobs for British workers’ and promises to deport migrants who peddle drugs to ‘our children’. Short of promising to deport those who rape our daughters, he could not have made a baser — or more emotive — appeal. The utter cynicism of it all is demonstrated by the facts that ‘British jobs for British workers’, if implemented as policy, would be illegal, and that the deportation of foreign criminals is far from open and shut, as the case of the Italian-born murderer Learco Chindamo demonstrated.