What do you make of the UK’s latest net migration figures, which show it being revised upwards to a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023, before dropping to 728,000 in the year to 2024 – a number that could also be revised upwards in the future?
Do you agree with the politician who said that the numbers “show the scandal of politicians promising, year after year, that they can cut immigration to the tens of thousands”? That sounds like a statement we can all endorse, no matter whether you believe net migration must fall dramatically because of the extra strain it puts on Britain’s already crumbling infrastructure and public services, or whether you think that even when that strain is factored in, still migrants make a positive contribution to our economy and are needed in greater numbers than ever because of a declining birth rate and the health and care needs of our ageing population.
The problem is that those words about scandalous figures were just about the only truthful thing Boris Johnson said in an interview with ITV news in May 2016, after that year’s net migration figures had been released. His full quote was this: “They show the scandal of politicians promising, year after year, that they can cut immigration to the tens of thousands when they have absolutely no control while we remain in the European Union. It is only if we vote to leave on June 23 that we can take back control of our immigration… what enrages me about this is that politicians say they can reduce immigration to the tens of thousands, but as long as we stay in the EU system we can’t.”
Johnson, then co-leader of the official Leave campaign, was picking up a theme from Nigel Farage, leader of the unofficial campaign, Leave.EU. A couple of weeks earlier, the then UKIP leader had said: “We have to, in this campaign, make people understand that EU membership and uncontrolled immigration are synonymous with each other.”
When this pair of abject liars spoke, net migration was around 330,000. Once post-Brexit rules came into force at the end of 2020, immigration from the EU began to fall, but non-EU immigration has gone up rapidly. In the year to June 2015, it was 163,000, but four years later it was up to 224,000. In the year to June 2024, it reached the remarkable figure of 845,000.
Debates on the need for, and effects of, large-scale migration into the UK will continue, and will modify over time. The effect on Britain’s already struggling universities and social care sector if Labour continues with Tory restrictions on foreign workers bringing dependents with them already looks like a catastrophe in the making for the sake of a short-term headline win.
But what we can definitively say is this: Despite both Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage (who calls the latest figures “horrendous”) pledging that it would, Brexit did not control immigration. In fact, Brexit has helped to cause a boom in net migration.
Therefore, in a week where many have signed a petition asking for a new general election because “what we were promised hasn’t been delivered on” and “things have happened that there was no mandate for”, isn’t it time for a new referendum?
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