Jeremy Corbyn is right not to promise deep cuts in UK immigration, because the only surefire way to deliver them is not by restricting freedom of movement but by crashing the economy.
He is also right to say it was concerns about the impact of migration, rather than the numbers themselves, that drove the leave victory in the EU referendum. Indeed, that lack of public confidence has been partly fuelled by politicians promising to deliver deep cuts in net migration but spectacularly failing to deliver.
As a Guardian analysis in the immediate aftermath of June’s vote showed, those who have experienced the highest levels of migration are the least anxious about it. The highest levels of remain voters were in areas of the highest net migration, while some of the strongest leave areas have had the fewest recent new immigrants.
It was no surprise that London, which took 133,000 of the record 333,000 net arrivals in 2015, voted to remain in the EU. But Manchester also voted for remain, and at 13,554 had nearly double the level of net migration seen in Birmingham, which voted leave.
The pattern is starkest at the local authority level. Lambeth in London, which recorded the highest remain vote, of 78%, saw a net influx of 4,598, while Castle Point in Essex, which includes Canvey Island, voted 72% for leave, after a net inflow of 81 international migrants in 2015.
In Conservative Wandsworth in London, net migration was 6,295 and 75% of voters backed remain, while in Labour Hartlepool there was a net inflow of 113 and 69% of people voted to leave.
It is true that areas such as Boston in Lincolnshire and Fenland in Cambridgeshire, which have had high levels of net migration, also feature in the top 10 leave areas. But these are isolated areas that have seen the most rapid population change, in places with little history of overseas migration. They are also the most in need of the kind of flexible rapid response migration impact funding that Labour pioneered in 2008 to help relieve pressure on housing, GP surgeries, policing and schools – funding that was scrapped by the Tories as ineffective.
The problem with Labour’s migration impact fund was that Gordon Brown refused to allow any Treasury contributions. Instead a £50-a-head levy was imposed on non-EU migrant visas, and it never raised more than £50m, which did little to ease the pressure points. A new migration impact fund – the Tories have promised a smaller-scale version – needs to be a much more serious effort.
But what about that Brexit vote? Won’t leaving the European Union mean deep cuts in immigration can now be delivered? Surely ending free movement to close the door on unskilled labour from the rest of Europe would bring down net migration to the tens of thousands from its near record level of 327,000 in the year to March.
Theresa May has tried to pull every lever over the past six years to deliver that promised deep cut in the net migration numbers. Despite her abject failure as home secretary to reduce net migration to less than 100,000, she has made it to No 10.
What could she do in a post-Brexit world to make good on that broken pledge? She could, as many of her former cabinet colleagues such as George Osborne have suggested, take overseas students – 163,000 came last year – out of the net migration figures on the grounds that they come to study rather than settle in the UK. But she has repeatedly ruled that out, claiming too many stay on after their studies and dismissing the option as “fiddling the figures”.
Restricting the free movement of labour from within the EU is a possibility. Around 179,000 EU citizens arrived in Britain to work last year, of whom 101,000 had a definite job to go to. The other 78,000 came looking for work.
Any new work permit system is likely to give a visa to those with a definite job offer, even on a temporary basis for less skilled occupations. The jobseekers could face restrictions, but even if they were all banned it would not deliver the deep cuts sought. It would also probably provoke retaliation, denying the right to work to some of the 1.2 million Britons currently working and living in Europe.
A New Economics Foundation analysis on Tuesday goes further and suggests that restrictions on free movement, far from ending undercutting, could actually reduce wages further, because experience shows that if migrants cannot come legally they will try to come illegally.
The truth is that Britain’s economy remains relatively buoyant and will continue to attract EU migrants, legally or illegally, while it remains the jobs factory of Europe. In fact, migrant labour is helping to fuel that economic growth. The only sure way to deliver deep cuts in immigration is to crash the economy. Corbyn is wise not to promise that. It would turn Project Fear into Project Fact.
