This year we may actually have net emigration in Britain – and we will all pay the price. With a low birth rate and ever more stringent migration policies, the UK faces the prospect of a declining workforce, a declining economy, and failing public services. For over a decade here, a deep irrationality has dominated our conversation about migration. Much of the blame rests with David Cameron’s nonsense pledge to cut net migration to “the tens of thousands”. It was oft-repeated but never achieved. Not least because that same government pursued policies that made achieving it impossible. It was their decision to make universities evermore reliant on attracting greater numbers of foreign students and their decision not to expand training places for nurses and doctors, meaning we needed to import more health workers. They slashed adult education funding and cut further education budgets, so we weren’t training enough skilled workers across various sectors of the economy. But despite the obvious contradictions Theresa May, the Home Secretary at the time, boasted about creating a “really hostile environment” for migrants and sent “Go Home” vans around the most ethnically diverse parts of London. The Windrush scandal, in which British citizens were wrongly deported, gave a brief respite to the incessant arms race of rhetoric designed to reduce immigration numbers and inflame the issue for political gain. But since 2024, the process has gone into overdrive. The rise of Reform has had both the Conservatives and Labour follow in their slipstream, copying their rhetoric and policies. Sir Keir Starmer and his Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood have tightened migration laws and made it more difficult to become a British citizen, while the Prime Minister evoked Enoch Powell in talking about an “island of strangers”. Migrant workers now face a 15-year wait to attain indefinite leave to remain. And what’s to stop a future government changing the terms again? If you’re a migrant worker in the UK, the prospect of a Reform or Conservative-led government (likely given current polling) which might abolish indefinite leave to remain makes the UK deeply unattractive. Both Farage’s Reform and Badenoch’s Conservatives have also previously backed an ICE-style deportation force in the UK. Anyone who could look at Trump’s America and want to import that chaos and now killing to the streets of Britain clearly has no interest beyond stoking division. This is about race and class. It will be migrant cleaners, delivery riders, and care workers who face Windrush-style harassment – but this time militarised if Badenoch or Farage get their way. For too long proclaimed liberal progressives capitulated to this agenda, scolding those who make factual points about the necessity of migration for our country as ignoring the “legitimate concerns” of bigots. Now there are legitimate concerns in Government that hating migrants and cutting numbers might actually be leading to bad social and economic outcomes. Just look at the Government’s own statistics, released last week, which showed skilled worker visa applications were down by 36 per cent and health and care visa applications down by 51 per cent. That is not good news for our economy or our public services. The Resolution Foundation has said “the OBR has previously estimated that a sustained 200,000 reduction in net migration could chip as much as £20bn off the Government’s budget by the end of the decade.” This Government’s approach to such fiscal holes has been to put up our taxes. And the effects won’t just be felt in our pockets, but by our elderly facing neglect from a lack of care workers, and our NHS waiting lists remaining stubbornly long. With the UK birth rate at a record low of 1.44 births per woman, well below the 2.1 needed for a stable population, our reliance on migration for economic stability and adequate care for our ageing population is obvious and undeniable. As long as we don’t train enough construction workers, plumbers, electricians and carpenters domestically, it will be felt in missed housebuilding targets – and a continuation of the housing crisis. For young people, it will mean less choice in higher education as universities continue to cut courses. Foreign students paying exorbitant fees are cross-subsidising courses for British students. That is our funding model. Congratulations, we are cutting migration. But we have persistently high NHS waiting lists, a shortage of social care, collapsing universities, missed housebuilding targets, lower economic growth and higher taxes. I have some legitimate concerns. Please could a Labour minister pander to those?
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