Migration

The inconveniently-timed net migration figures are out this morning, and they’re not good for the Prime Minister’s pledge to get immigration into the ‘tens of thousands’ by the general election. The Office for National Statistics estimates that net long-term migration to the UK was 212,000 in 2013. This is a rise—one the ONS says is ‘not a statistically significant increase’—from 177,000 the previous year. But what is ‘significant’ is the increase in the number of EU migrants – 201,000 EU citizens came to the UK in 2013, up from 158,000 the previous year. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/ZtESo/index.html”] The figures released today show 214,000 people came to the UK for work in 2013, which

The next set of net migration figures are, conveniently, released on the day of the European and local elections. Some wonder whether this will add grist to the mill of those on the Tory Right who want to cause trouble for Cameron as they can demand that he crack down further on immigration. But I’ve discovered that if there is one demand eurosceptics will make, it will be for the Prime Minister to scrap the target, rather than try harder to meet it. The reasoning behind this is that the Prime Minister could argue that freedom of movement in the European Union makes it impossible for the Conservatives to have

Globalisation is like a rising tide; we’re all living in our separate ponds with their own little social ecosystems until the floodwater starts to rise and turns them into one big lake. Many fish, especially, the big ones, are going to benefit but many will suffer in this frightening new world. It is that fear which Ukip’s new posters are aimed at addressing (or exploiting, depending on your view). Sure, Europe is about free movement of labour, but that movement is highly imbalanced and has been for a number of years. Far more people are seeking to come from southern and eastern Europe to work in Britain than vice versa, and

How fitting that on the day Angela Merkel pops in to London to natter about EU reform, new figures show a big increase in net migration driven by a rise in immigration from within the European Union to the UK. Net migration in the year to September 2013 rose from 154,000 the previous year to 212,000. This morning, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said that it was ‘absolutely the objective’ to reduce net migration to below 100,000 by 2015. But today’s figures are a blow to the government’s chances of doing that. The problem is that while the Home Office is doing its best to control what it can control

David Cameron’s proposals on free movement recognise that the European Union is very different now from what it used to be. When it was essentially a club of rich Western European nations, total freedom of movement was workable. But now that it includes countries whose GDP per head is less than half ours it is not. This is not a particularly Eurosceptic insight. As I reported back in February, Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats were thinking of basing future transition controls on per capita GDP to prevent an unsustainable level of immigration. But what is true is that unless the freedom of movement issue is dealt with, it’ll be