UK records record migration – but are the Tories jumping to the wrong conclusions?
Migration successes: these legal migrants were carrying out vital work in the UK because the UK needed them (the image is from 2016). Migrants are still needed here but it seems the Tories have their priorities wrong.
The Conservative government’s policy to reduce legal migration into the UK has failed dramatically, ONS figures show.
These figures estimate that net migration – the difference between the number of people coming to live in the UK and those leaving – was a record 745,000 last year.
Some – like ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman – have demanded new restrictions on the reasons people are allowed in:
Today’s record migration stats show we’ve let in an extra million people in just 2 years, a population equivalent to Birmingham. The pressure on housing, the NHS, schools, wages, and community cohesion, is unsustainable. When do we say: enough is enough? 1/3
— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) November 23, 2023
Brexit gave us the tools. It’s time to use them. As HS I pushed to:
– Put an annual cap on net migration;
– Raise the salary threshold to £45k (excluding health & social care);
– Close the graduate visa route;
– Cap health & social care visas;
– Limit dependents on all visas. 3/3— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) November 23, 2023
But this would restrict the number of skilled people coming to work in the NHS, and deprive schools and universities of vital funding from foreign students, among other drawbacks that This Writer is probably not knowledgeable enough to see.
The reality, it seems, is not that migration is out of control – because businesses are screaming for people who are capable of carrying out skilled work for them, and are in fact finding their effectiveness restricted by the lack of these people.
This is especially true when it comes to farming. Here’s a video clip by Professor Tim Wilson, explaining the situation:
And what are the Tories suggesting to solve the problem? Here’s Maximilien Robespierre:
So the solution is to import crops that can’t be raised economically – in direct contradiction of one of the main arguments for Brexit: that we could create goods more economically here than get them from abroad.
For This Writer, there’s only one conclusion: the Tories are changing their story to confuse us.
I don’t think there is even a hidden plan behind this; they’re just trying to cover up one blunder after another over the last seven years since the EU referendum, if not the whole 13 years since the Coalition government slithered into office in 2010.
Nothing these clowns are saying is making any sense at all.
We need a rational analysis of the kind of people the UK needs to bring in from abroad, that recommends the most economical ways of getting them. Without that, this “hit and hope” Tory shambles is going to keep getting it wrong and continue failing to hit its targets.
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