The economy shrinks quarter by quarter; whole streets of houses in northern towns are abandoned, schools start closing for want of pupils – but there is no shortage of jobs for those who want to work, and traffic on the M25 seems a bit easier. That is a vision of Britain without migration. The headline to the latest population estimates from the Office of National Statistics – which cover the year to the middle of 2023 – is that the number of people living in the United Kingdom swelled by what is a record for modern times. The population grew by 1 per cent, adding an extra 662,400 people – more than the population of Manchester.
You have to dig deeper into the figures to realise that all of this growth is down to migration.
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