Will Labour fall into the migration trap?

Brexit was the issue that won the last general election for the Tories but botching it may well lose them the next. The Red Wall was attracted by the promise that after sovereignty was wrested back from Brussels, the UK would be able to control its immigration policy and employers would have to pay their workers more.

Instead, net immigration – the legal kind, nothing to do with small boats – hit 745,000 in 2022. This is double pre-Brexit levels and far higher than the government expected. No one knew quite how the new visa toolkit would work, and ministers are now scrambling to curb numbers. Higher salary thresholds have been imposed and rules on bringing over dependants have been tightened. The quarterly immigration figures published next week will be vital to Sunak’s claim to be making progress.

Asylum claims fell by about a third over the course of last year, with an even faster drop for health and social care visas.