“Despite two decades of broken promises, it’s official: the UK is now an immigration nation. David Cameron promised to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s – tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands a year. That was in the 2010 Tory Manifesto. He repeated that pledge in the 2015 Tory Manifesto, where he secured a majority for the party.
In the 2017 Manifesto, Theresa May pledged to reduce and control immigration, to ensure sustainable net migration in the tens of thousands by 2019, with numbers at 245,000. Boris Johnson promised that there would be fewer lower-skilled migrants and overall numbers would come down.
Today, Rishi Sunak doesn’t even want to discuss hard numbers at all during softball interviews on a daytime TV show, even more embattled than his Premiership. Out of control.
What do you think at the moment?
Well, no, I think the numbers are just too high.
What is the dream number?
What’s your target number?
What can people look out for?
Well, I want the numbers to come down, and that’s what people want.
Well, look, these things are not easy to do. It depends on the economy, and we need to recover. You were around 260-270. That was your time, and the numbers that I’ve inherited are closer to 500,000 plus. And you’ve seen the numbers today, as you said. But look, my commitment is to bring numbers down.
And no wonder he doesn’t want to talk specifics, given long-term migration was today announced at 1.2 million. That means net migration has soared to a record 606,000. That is an untenable situation, given the country is only building a little over 200,000 homes a year, not to mention the pressures it brings on our health, education, and justice systems. But look, it’s so much more than that too. We never signed up to this overwhelming change in our demography. Indeed, we voted against that time and again.
The fact that the open borders, free movement Labor Party is now more trusted on legal migration stopping the boat is an indictment on the Tory government.
So Rishi Sunak, he needs to stop with his scripted lines aimed to appease our very real fears and actually do something bold. It’s no longer good enough to just say that the Labor Party would be worse.
And if he refuses, the Conservative Party simply must replace him with a leader who, at all costs, will bring net migration back to the tens of thousands. Otherwise, a historic defeat looms next year, and Britain will end up changed forever.”
