Brexit must mean control of our borders

SO much for the Brexodus! As the latest official population estimates show, mass migration continues unabated.

More than one million Poles living in Britain… More Romanians living here than Irish citizens… The foreign-born population of the UK now almost ten million…

And take just one example – Boston in Lincolnshire – where foreign nationals make up 29 per cent of the population, up from just 3 per cent. No wonder the residents voted overwhelmingly for Brexit.

Nor are the projections – which fail to account for vast numbers of illegal migrants – any less alarming. They predict the population of already crowded England will grow by 3.2million by 2026 – to nearly 59million.

This is simply unsustainable. Yes, the vast majority of migrants are decent, hardworking people, but at such vast scale they place huge pressure on infrastructure, public services and housing.

Yet the bigger the numbers get, the greater the opportunity for the Tories, especially as Labour’s Diane Abbott has made clear she would throw open the door even wider.

At the very moment Brexit is to hand ministers unprecedented powers to restrict EU numbers, the polls show overwhelming public backing for lower migration. And yet the latest fashionable idea in some Conservative circles – advanced by Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson – is to abandon the tens of thousands target.

This would be a betrayal of the millions who voted for Brexit. No, the answer is simple: restore some sanity to Britain’s borders.