Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was in Erbil, in Kurdish Iraq, signing a new cross-border security agreement when she learned about the immigration figures from the Tory’s final year in power. One official said Cooper was shocked when she heard the news. The numbers were higher than expected, nearly hitting a million.
Cooper’s shock was shared across Westminster.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp had anticipated a significant decrease in the immigration figures based on the new Office for National Statistics estimates. He had been confidently touring TV studios that morning, planning to credit Labour for the decline. However, the numbers actually reflected policy decisions made by his own party.
It must be acknowledged that Philp was accurate in his assessment. The responsibility for this high number of immigrants lies with the Tories. This turn of events is considered the most significant domestic policy betrayal in the history of British politics post World War II.
Let’s return to where this whole tawdry saga began. That febrile summer of 2016 when the British people were presented with the following solemn entreaty. ‘The only way to take back control of immigration is to Vote Leave on June 23,’ Boris Johnson told the nation. ‘Last year, 270,000 people came to this country from the EU and net migration was 184,000. That means we are adding a population the size of Oxford to the UK every year just from EU migration.’
Yvette Cooper in Erbil, in Kurdish Iraq, signing a new cross-border security agreement with the country’s minister of interior Abdul Amir al-Shimmari
He concluded with a dark warning. ‘If you vote “In” on June 23, you are kissing goodbye permanently to control of immigration. You are voting for the current situation not only to continue but to get worse.’
The people believed him. Sick of being ignored, and belittled and dismissed as racists, they put their faith in those who assured them this time their voice really would be heard. They were finally going to be allowed to ‘take back control’.
They grudgingly believed Theresa May, too, when she replaced David Cameron and pledged to cut migration to ‘tens of thousands’. They certainly believed Johnson when he returned triumphantly to Downing Street to ‘Get Brexit Done’ and ‘make our own laws and control our own borders’.
They even gave Rishi Sunak a hearing – admittedly more in hope than expectation – when he said: ‘Since I became Prime Minister, net migration has fallen ten per cent. The plan is working. Let’s stick with it.’
It was a lie. Actually, not ‘a’ lie. But the biggest lie ever perpetuated on Britain.
Because, in truth, behind all the bold words and tub-thumping rhetoric, what were our politicians – Tory politicians – actually doing?
They were allowing migration numbers to soar. Not to the 184,000 Johnson claimed was unsustainable in 2016. Not even to the staggering 700,000 we were told migration had peaked at in November 2023. But more than 900,000 new net arrivals.
What’s more, during that period, those Tory ministers weren’t just trotting out their puerile promises to take an iron grip of our borders. They were simultaneously lecturing and hectoring and berating anyone they claimed was standing in the way of their heroic struggle to get migration under control.
Liberal lawyers. Activist judges. Foreign courts. Just about anyone who looked French.
Yet, what did we learn on Thursday? That there isn’t a lawyer or judge in this country, or anywhere across Europe, who has done more to undermine public faith in the British migration system than our own Ministers of the Crown.
Because this tsunami of migration – entirely legal migration – didn’t happen by accident. It was the product of a series of wholly deliberate policy choices.
The scrapping of the Resident Labour Market Test that made employers prove they had attempted to employ British workers. The decision not to uprate the salary threshold for low-skilled migrants. The lifting of visa caps in low-paid sectors such as social care.
A succession of Tory governments didn’t lose control of migration. They knowingly and willingly flung open the doors.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp (pictured with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch) had been confident the new ONS estimates would show a dramatic fall, Dan Hodges writes
So now, having blustered, bleated and deflected on to everyone but themselves, the Conservative Party is going to reap the whirlwind. One that will initially tear through Kemi Badenoch and her Shadow Cabinet.
Over the past few months, a battle has raged over how to define Sir Keir Starmer’s electoral inheritance. Labour have claimed they took power only to find a cavernous black hole in the nation’s finances.
The Tories have tried to rebut the charge, accusing Starmer of deceiving voters, and seeking excuses for his deceit.
That fight is now over. No one can seriously contest the scale of the immigration black hole left for Starmer and Yvette Cooper. And that will now colour every other area of the debate.
‘We are having to clear up the Tories’ mess,’ Starmer will charge. And who will be able to counter him?
Then there is the long shadow being cast from Clacton. The fundamental dilemma facing the Conservatives’ new leader was how to reunite the Right. Well, on Thursday she obtained her answer.
She can’t. The fracture between the Tory party and its Red Wall supporters was created by the perception they were betrayed over immigration. And that perception has been permanently cemented.
‘On behalf of the Conservative Party, it is right that I, as new leader, accept responsibility and say truthfully we got it wrong,’ Badenoch admitted last week, before pledging a Tory government would put a new cap on visas.
She needn’t have wasted her breath. No one will take seriously anything a member of the previous Tory administration says about immigration for years – perhaps decades.
It’s Nigel Farage and his Reform party who will now receive a hearing from disillusioned Conservative voters. But the impact of the Great Tory Immigration Betrayal goes far deeper.
There are good arguments for the benefits of migration. There are equally good arguments against them. Yet what every politician of every party knows is that there is one thing you simply cannot do. Which is stoke up rhetoric about the perils of migration, then fail to put in place the policies to tackle it.
That is precisely what the last government did – in a manner that bordered on the criminally negligent. And now, every community, in every corner of the country, is dealing with the consequences.
Some have said last week’s shocking migration figures symbolise the failure of Britain’s political class. They don’t. They symbolise a grotesque, shameful, utterly unprecedented Tory failure. Kemi Badenoch and her colleagues will be lucky if they are ever forgiven for it.
