The interview that exposes the Tories’ migration failures

Can we trust the Conservatives to deliver – or even to try to deliver – on whatever migration-sceptic policy pledges they unveil for the 2029 general election? It would be wrong to say that the party’s record on this issue is chequered or that it has been unreliable in the past. Because during the 21st century it has been 100 per cent reliable – reliable in letting us down.

The Tory party has never delivered on its immigration promises and never put much effort into doing so either. In 2010, 2015 and 2017 it promised voters that annual net migration would be cut to ‘the tens of thousands’. In 2019, when it was handed a bumper 80-seat majority, it pledged that ‘overall numbers will come down’.

Yet the Treasury and other Whitehall departments were permitted by David Cameron and Theresa May to put multiple roadblocks in the way of policies that might have cut net migration to anywhere near the target of 100,000 a year.