This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
For all the posturing on migration, the rebel breakfasts, the threatening statements by the ERG, crunch votes in parliament and the parade of right-wingers grappling for air time, the best analysis on the increasingly depressing issue is actually to be found in the business press. Following James Cleverly’s announcement that a package of measures will be rolled out to cut legal migration, Bloomberg led with: ‘UK government’s tough migration rules to impact economic growth’, with experts suggesting that the moves “may force the OBR to downgrade their potential growth forecasts”, which let’s face it, were pretty bleak to begin with.
The way Oxford Economics senior adviser Michael Saunders sees it, the government can’t execute its knee-jerk migration policies without directly impacting their other objectives, namely to cut taxes, reduce inflation and boost economic growth. The visa plans will lower potential growth as employers will struggle to fill jobs, removing both economic capacity and demand which will likely lead to unemployment rising and tax receipts going down, stripping Jeremy Hunt of the limited headroom for giveaways he was afforded last month. “While Rishi Sunak has put boosting growth at the heart of his agenda, he’s moving against immigration to quell an internal party rebellion and deliver Brexit pledges to control the borders”, Saunder says, which sort of puts him in a check-mate situation.
Far-right figures from within the Conservative Party may have kicked up a stink about the ONS figures, but few of them took the time to look at the details. Those crossing in small boats make up a tiny minority, while people displaced by conflicts in Ukraine and political turmoil in Hong Kong are also not the primary drivers of numbers going up. Students – who invest heavily in British institutions and local economies before returning home – and health care workers were actually behind the numbers going up, which means that Mr Cleverly was right when he said the figures were actually “testament to our ability to use our immigration system to prioritise the skills we need”. That is, of course, until his government moved to change all that.
Sunak faces one of the biggest moments of his premiership this week not because he has a crank bill that might not pass its second reading, but because his party can’t get to grips with the fact that Britain needs migrants now more than ever. I can’t have been the only one to let out a deep sigh this morning when I realised the country’s future has come to depend on the pronouncements of leading lights like Lee Anderson, Jonathan Gullis, Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, all of whom were in attendance at the so-called ‘rebel breakfast’ with a danish in one hand and Rishi Sunak in the other. For as long as that remains the case, Britain will remain in managed decline.
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