Today’s net migration figures naturally present a problem for ministers in that they are going in the opposite direction to what the government officially says they should be. As Fraser says here, net migration to the UK last year was at a record high of 504,000, and this looks rather different to the high-wage, high-skill and low migration model spoken of in the Brexit debate.
The government approach currently is to focus on the specific bit that winds voters up – illegal crossings using small boats in the Channel – rather than the general numbers. The argument that Rishi Sunak advanced on this at the CBI earlier this week was that this was the thing government has to fix before voters will even contemplate the sort of ‘practical’ system that the business group is calling for.
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