How Sunak handed Starmer his new immigration 'win'

It was Rishi Sunak, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick who took the measures that led to this morning’s dramatic figures showing that net immigration halved last year. But it will be Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and Angela Rayner who take the credit.

- JOHN RENTOUL CHIEF POLITICAL COMMENTATOR

First, though, we should deal with the reasonable objection that this assumes that immigration of 860,000 a year is a bad thing, and that 431,000 is a better thing. That shouldn’t be controversial. Adding the equivalent population of a city the size of Edinburgh to the population every year is unlikely to improve the quality of life for existing residents, whatever it might do to GDP. It is not surprising that 95 per cent of British people say that the “ideal” level of net immigration is below 500,000 a year.

In fact, last week’s opinion poll by Merlin Strategy found that two-thirds of British people (63 per cent) want immigration to be below 10,000 a year, which is essentially no net immigration at all.

So let us leave aside the knotty question of the implications of lower immigration for economic growth, and assume for the purposes of argument that halving net immigration is a triumph of public policy. Who should take the credit?

Again, the answer should not be controversial. The latest figures cover the calendar year 2024. Labour was in government for the second half of the year, but the policy changes that contributed to the fall in immigration were all made under the Conservatives.