Will mainstream parties get the credit for turning up the volume on immigration?

David Cameron is set to give his big immigration speech this coming week, according to the Sunday Times, while James reports that Labour is to turn up the volume on the subject too. Both party leaderships are under pressure from their backbenches to take the Ukip threat seriously and give voters a clear sense that they would crack down on immigration.

Both parties do need to deal with their legacies. Labour’s one has been much-picked-over and apologised for. But the Tories are also realising that they won’t have as much to boast about come the election as they’d hoped. That’s why Theresa May today finally moved from using weird words such as ‘comment’ to describe the Tory net migration target and accepted that the party just won’t meet it. She told the Andrew Marr Show:

‘But it is of course unlikely that we’re going to reach the tens of thousands by the end of the Parliament.