Immigration

The British public are clearly dissatisfied with the way our immigration system currently works. One of the main reasons that motivated people to vote for Brexit in the recent referendum is the hope that Britain could better control immigration by ending the free movement of people from the EU. For years now, immigration has been one of the issues that the public are most concerned about. But there is hope: now, more than ever, the cynicism can be cracked. There is an exciting opportunity, thanks to Brexit and the appointment of a new Cabinet, for the Government to introduce significant reforms to our immigration system to increase public confidence in

Is the new government under Theresa May going to ditch the target to drive net migration into the tens of thousands? Amber Rudd and Boris Johnson signalled a change of policy from the back-of-a-fag-packet plan yesterday by saying the aim was to ‘bring migration down to sustainable levels’, though Downing Street insisted that this was not an end to the target, saying ‘the Prime Minister does see sustainable levels as down to the tens of thousands’. It would be odd, given May’s personal commitment to the net migration target, and her personal frustration (and that of her aide Nick Timothy) that it wasn’t met as a result – in her

Before even writing this I know what response it will meet. Some who fought for Leave on 23 June will be contemptuous. ‘Bad loser’, ‘diddums’, ‘suck it up’, ‘go and live somewhere else’. From the online Leave brigade who stalk the readers’ comments section beneath media columns I’m already familiar with the attitudes of the angry brigade; but aware that there were also plenty of perfectly sane and nice people who took a considered decision to vote for our exit from the EU. To what I shall say, such people can reasonably reply that their side have beliefs too, and Remain can claim no monopoly on reason or conscience. What

The Tory leadership hopefuls all appeared before a packed out 1922 hustings tonight. First up was Michael Gove. His pitch was that he had the conviction, the experience and the vision to lead the party and the country. He argued that the Tories’ aim should be to help those on £24,000 a year. Surprisingly, Gove wasn’t asked any questions about what had happened between him and Boris Johnson last week. However, he was asked twice about his former adviser Dominic Cummings. Gove said that Cummings would have no formal role in his Number 10. Gove was typically fluent, answering nine questions in the fifteen minutes allotted to him. He was

It is now almost three days since David Cameron announced his resignation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been in hiding ever since. And the Parliamentary Labour party is revolting against its own leader and members. It is one thing for the whole political class to be in disarray. It is quite another for the government to be missing in action. Obviously we are waiting for the Conservative party leadership contest to get going and swiftly resolve itself. But that will take months. In the meantime the country is still here. And a number of things need to happen fast. Since Mark Carney’s intervention early on Friday there has been

So long as the economy was at the top of the agenda, ‘Remain’ will have felt safe in the knowledge that ‘Leave’ could do little to win over the public’s trust. But today, the Prime Minister has his former aide and friend Steve Hilton to thank for bringing the issue of migration soaring back into the headlines. What’s particularly dangerous for the Government about what Steve Hilton had to say is his claim that the PM was directly told in 2012 that meeting the promise to bring net migration down to the ‘tens of thousands’ was impossible. Here’s what Steve Hilton told the Daily Mail: ‘We were told, directly and

Jeremy Corbyn went on The Marr Show this morning to talk about Jo Cox’s tragic death and the EU referendum. Corbyn talked movingly about Cox and how MPs don’t want to be cut off from the communities that they serve. The conversation then moved on to the EU referendum. Andrew Marr asked Corbyn if he thought there should be an upper limit on immigration. Corbyn replied, rightly, ‘I don’t think you can have one while you have free movement of labour’. Now, this is true. But it very much isn’t the Remain campaign script; David Cameron has even refused to admit that his ambition to reduce immigration to the tens

One consequence of David Cameron’s refusal to take part in any ‘Blue on Blue’ debates is that he and Michael Gove are appearing several days apart on BBC Question Time. Tonight, it was Gove’s turn to face the studio audience. In reply to the first question, Gove made clear that—in the event of Britain voting to leave—he wouldn’t support the so-called ‘punishment Budget’ that George Osborne set out today. Gove said that the Remain campaign were ‘turning it up to 11’ on the scare stories as polling day approached. Though, interestingly, he studiously avoided any personal criticism of Osborne. With the polls tightening the Remainers are getting more passionate, and

Tom Watson’s comments today that a future government would have to try to reform freedom of movement rules in the European Union are clearly a last-ditch attempt to show the party’s voters that it is taking their anger about immigration seriously. But they are also strange, for three reasons. The first is that it is strange to be talking about a future renegotiation when the Remain campaign does still occasionally try to persuade voters that they are voting to stay in a reformed European Union. By talking about what more needs to be done, Watson is effectively dumping all over the renegotiation that David Cameron has already carried out, saying that

Gordon Brown’s intervention in the EU referendum debate was meant to be all about putting forward the positive case for voting ‘Remain’. But not for the first time, the former Prime Minister appears to have fallen flat on his face over immigration. It wasn’t quite as bad as Brown’s Gillian Duffy moment in that he didn’t call anyone ‘bigoted’ for holding a view on migration. Instead, though, the message to those worried about migration was…you’re worrying about the wrong thing. Brown told John Humphrys on Today that: ‘The biggest problem is illegal immigration.’ So the essence of Brown’s message was not to speak to the many Labour voters who genuinely

The Leave campaign have had their best week of the campaign this week. After months of being battered by the Whitehall machine, they’ve taken advantage of purdah silencing government departments to get themselves onto the front foot. As I write in The Sun this morning, even IN supporting Cabinet Ministers admit that Leave have had a good week. But they argue that they won’t be able to ride the immigration issue to victory on June 23rd. One argues that you can’t focus on immigration week after week, or ‘By week four, you end up sounding like Nigel Farage’. But Vote Leave think their trump card is the link between immigration and people’s