Labour’s open door for immigration

At the time of the referendum on the UK’S membership of the EU in 2016, the big issue was immigration. Certainly, lots of people voted to leave on constitutional and democratic grounds, seeking a repatriation of sovereignty pooled with the rest of Europe. But millions voted Leave because they believed, in doing so, that they would see a cut in the overall number of people coming to this country. Arguably, it was this cohort of the electorate, including some three million who had never voted before, who pushed Brexit over the line. And many did so specifically on the issue of immigration.

But what did they intend should happen? Was theirs a vote for greater control over immigration to be exercised by the British government or was it to bring down the numbers? The general election campaign is forcing politicians to confront this question and their answers will not be to the liking of many who thought Brexit would mean fewer immigrants.

The EU has never considered its own nationals moving around Europe to be immigrants at all, but citizens exercising their right to free movement. The Conservatives propose to end that free movement, when and if the country eventually leaves at the end of the transition period next year, and introduce a points-based system of the sort that already applies for non-eu nationals.

But there is no promise of a cut in immigration, because the party has dropped the targets imposed, but never achieved, under Theresa May. The Tories now say that what is important is not the overall numbers but our ability to control immigration; yet what really matters to many people is that there should be fewer people coming in, to relieve pressures on public services.

That may or may not happen if the Tories win, but it certainly won’t if Labour is in office. Jeremy Corbyn yesterday said his party would extend family reunion rights to all EU citizens settled here and would retain some sort of free movement, though the details will not be available until the manifesto is published later this week.

Even with the bare details we have it is evident that Labour’s immigration policy is tantamount to an open door: the very opposite to what most people have been consistently saying they want to see. Have the politicians been listening to them?