AVOID FALSE BREXIT PROMISES

Politicians who want to celebrate the health of the British economy are always on the lookout for data to bolster their case, yet routinely neglect one consistent metric of success: immigration.

Recently, Andrea Leadsom, the environment secretary, suggested that farmers should be able to hire EU workers postBrexit. Yet such seasonal influxes of labourers, bringing high densities of transient workers, are precisely the kind of migration that provokes resentment among longer-established populations. It is unlikely she would have suggested such a compromise last year, when drumming up leave votes.

It is not just farmers who want to continue importing workers. The NHS and social care services rely on foreign-born staff. The City of London wants to hire in the global marketplace. So do universities, retailers and internationally integrated industries...

No immigration regime for Britain can satisfy both political pressure for lower numbers and employer demands for flexibility. And there is no prospect of a return to the culturally homogenous workplaces and town centres of yore. Pretending otherwise, raising false hopes that the past can be restored, is a proven recipe for disappointment and anger...

The Prime Minister is currently indulging the belief that Brexit will provide the necessary relief. It won’t. The demand for a better border-control regime is politically impossible to ignore, but the time is long overdue for Mrs May to show more honesty about the scale and complexity of the task.