Talk to MPs of all colours at Westminster and they’ll tell you that when they knock on voters’ doors, the issue of immigration always comes up.
No surprise then that today’s hotly anticipated migration statistics sparked a flurry of activity from across the political spectrum. For Nigel Farage, it was a near-perfect backdrop to boast about how his Reform UK party had hit 100,000 members.
Net migration to the UK fell by 20 per cent to 728,000 in the year to June 2024. However, after revising their calculations, the Office for National Statistics said net migration to the UK in the 12 months previous was far higher than originally estimated, hitting a record high of almost one million.
Crucially, the Government can’t be blamed – or take credit for – the figures. The statistics office attributed the fall to the declining numbers of dependants on study visas coming from outside the EU, a measure introduced by former Tory home secretary James Cleverly.
Labour, perhaps wisely, didn’t oppose these measures at the fag end of the Tory administration, even though some on the left argued the plans were cruel. Instead, they focused on seeking a viable and longer-term alternative to the doomed Rwanda offshoring proposal.
But Labour is not immune to the political significance of today’s figures. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer popped up to say the numbers are “far too high” and signal a “loss of control”. But crucially he didn’t commit to a figure he’d be happy with or a time frame to achieve it. “The days of fiction and pretending there are easy answers are over,” he said at a Downing Street press conference. “These are the days of hard graft.”
Meanwhile Home Secretary Yvette Cooper appears to have taken the fable of the hare and tortoise to heart. Based on rooting out at source the gangs which facilitate irregular migration, aka people smuggling, Labour’s plan is certainly not speedy.
The Government likes to talk about tackling “upstream issues” which is just jargon for taxpayer funding to help origin countries disband the gangs, alongside signing mini treaties to either block migrants coming to the UK or return them. Government sources insist forced returns are up 19 per cent since the election, an example, they say, of how their plan is slowly but steadily working.
As part of the flurry of activity prompted by today’s migration figures, Cooper concluded a three-day visit to Iraq where she announced a joint security agreement targeting gangs and strengthening border security co-operation. Simultaneously, Development Minister Anneliese Dodds announced the world’s lowest-income countries will receive access to nearly £2bn in grants and low-interest loans to encourage economic growth and discourage migration.
Far more worrying for the Government are another set of statistics released today on asylum seekers. The asylum system now costs £5.4bn – the highest level of spending on record and up by 36 per cent in the last year of the Tory administration.
Asked why the number of migrants housed in hotels had gone up by 6,000 under Labour, Starmer’s spokesman argued that “restoring order to the system we inherited will take time”. There’s that tortoise again.
But both Tory and Labour strategists fret that the wider picture of spiralling migration fits a narrative that nothing can be fixed, that the country is calcified in its decline and neither of the conventional parties can tackle it. It’s that plague-on-both-your-houses approach that has been so critical to Farage’s success.
“I have had enough of being lied to by the Conservative Party,” Farage told reporters today. “For Labour it’s even worse, I don’t think smashing the gangs is going to work.”
Downing Street believes that to tackle Farage’s brand of populism they need to get the basics working – pot holes filled in, NHS waiting lists down and migration lowered – to even stand a chance of making their case to the public.
Newly minted Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has been careful so far not to enter a detailed policy debate. A member of the Shadow Cabinet told i that the party is in “no rush” to start its policy review, arguing there is merit in taking it slowly, with no immediate general election.
But this strategy was seemingly cast to one side on Wednesday as Badenoch made a hastily arranged speech of her own on migration, apparently mindful of the coming storm.
While she owned the Tories’ failures on bringing down the overall migration numbers, her speech begged more questions than answers. Badenoch called for the return of the annual cap on migrants, a Tory proposal which no administration has successfully met – and crucially she didn’t commit to a figure.
She also announced plans to examine the ability of migrants to claim benefits. But that’s a policy already in place for over three million migrants, who have “no recourse to public funds”. Ditto no detail yet on where the party is headed on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
At his news conference in London today, Farage announced the former right-wing Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns would be Reform UK’s candidate for the Lincolnshire mayoral elections in May.
With Farage now seeking to make migration a focus in the local and mayoral elections, Badenoch will find herself under pressure from her own party to get a wriggle on. If Cooper is the tortoise and Farage the hare in this comparison, Badenoch is a rabbit somewhere near the starting line, still tying the laces on its trainers.
If Reform UK capture the newly created post of Lincolnshire mayor they will have control of a £24m budget and another line into Westminster alongside the other elected regional mayors.
The Tories, who are due to select their nominee from a six-person short-list for the post in 10 days’ time, must now consider whether in the most pro-Brexit area of the country, their candidate can outgun Reform UK. The race comes after Richard Tice took the Lincolnshire seat of Boston and Skegness off them at the election.
It’s an area ripe for Reform UK’s branding. In 2001 below 3 per cent of the population of Boston and Skegness were born outside of the UK. By 2011 that figure had reached 11 per cent and by 2021 it was 17 per cent. Former Tory MPs Matt Warman, Karl McCartney and Ben Bradley are considered the front-runners in the race to be the Conservative candidate.
One senior Tory, who had been eyeing up the Lincolnshire mayoralty as a bolted-on win in May, suggested the increased focus on the area by Reform could make the Tories less of a shoo-in. However, a second Tory source suggested the turnout in the area – expected to be low – could work in their favour.
This might end up being wishful thinking if Farage pitches up in Lincolnshire in the run-up to May’s elections and sprinkles his brand of anti-migration populism to a public hungry to hear it.
Migration is big news everywhere – the reaction to Thursday’s statistics only prove it.
