Cabinet battles over large immigration numbers come to light

Good morning. Another day, another round of headlines about high UK net migration figures and the government’s failure to reduce them. Some thoughts on what causes this, and why you should also expect to see more stories about wacky Labor policies.

Ministers come to blows

I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Rishi Sunak’s plan is to fight for the next election after successfully fulfilling his five pledges to the electorate. “Look at what I’ve done, and here’s what I plan to do next” is the government’s preferred approach for the next election.

The problem is that he is very far from delivering on those promises, and instead, unless something changes, his campaign pitch will be “Hey! Two out of five is not bad! This is not the message anyone hopes to send out in their electoral struggle. The only thing the Conservatives could do to make the problem worse is to add a sixth promise they won’t meet either.

Yet here we are. Michael Gove followed Suella Braverman, saying the current level of migration to the UK causes ‘inevitable pressure’ on housing and public services.

There are a few things to note here. The first is that, as things stand, the UK is likely to have lower net migration next year because the latest figure – a record 504,000 for the year to June 2022, while some analysts predict the estimate for the full calendar year will rise to 700,000 in the next week – includes the arrival of refugees from Ukraine and people fleeing a civil rights crackdown in Hong Kong. Some people think the reason ministers are making a lot of noise about net migration is that they hope to be able to report falling numbers next year.

I think it’s too half smart. Whatever happens, the number of net migrations will still be high by historical standards, and it could still surprise on the upside. The political and economic fallout from the impending re-election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as President of Turkey (our coverage of the elections in Türkiye is collected here) and the current situation in Pakistan (our Imran Khan mini-profile also serves as a handy introduction) could both lead to an unexpected increase in the number of people coming to the UK next year. I myself know several skilled workers from both countries who are considering coming to London, where they have relatives and friends.

What we’re actually seeing is a cabinet feud coming to light. On the one hand, you have Suella Braverman advocating for lower immigration and tighter controls (as home secretaries tend to do). On the other you have Jeremy Hunt and the various expense departments doing what they tend to do, which is to advocate for more migration to help fill vacancies and to keep the economy going.

The consequence of arguing this dispute in public is that it means greater focus on another conservative target that the government will not hit: just the thing they don’t need anymore!

Labour’s leaked proposals

Labor will phase out smoking by increasing the age at which you can start buying cigarettes. Labor will allow all EU residents to vote in UK elections. The job will grant workers the “right to disconnect” from email, WhatsApp and the phone.

One of the reasons there has been a flurry of stories about Labor’s manifesto is the impending meeting of the party’s national policy forum in mid-July, when powerbrokers and lay party members will meet to develop the party’s political platform. Some of these stories — including Jim Pickard’s scoop on the right to disconnect or the article by my former New Statesman political correspondent Patrick Maguire revealing Keir Starmer’s plans to free up greenbelt for home building – are true.

But some of the policy leaks Labor is considering will be anything but. For what? Well, for reasons similar to the Conservative Party’s very public debate on net migration. One way to get a promise you want into the manifesto is to make a lot of noise in advance, in order to increase the political cost of abandoning it. And, of course, another way to get a commitment you want to remove is to make a big fuss about it, raise the price to pursue it.

So we should expect that, in the coming months, Sunak and Starmer will be grappling with stories they’d rather not see in the papers about what policies they might — or might not — adopt in the upcoming meetings. next elections.

Shameless self-promotion

Georgina is back from vacation today! Before leaving, she wrote an excellent article about how newcomers from Hong Kong are find their feet in British politicswhile my column this week is about becoming a digital native who now find much of the digital world weird and scary.

Now try this

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3. I rather enjoyed it: it was a very good popcorn movie that ended the trilogy well. Slightly less impressed was Jonathan Romney, whose review you can read here.

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