Rishi’s ‘J-turn’ on migrant visas exposes this government’s heartless incompetence

The prime minister is supposed to be a details person – so why has he partly rowed back on his plan to raise the salary threshold for spousal visas to £38,700, asks John Rentoul

Yesterday, James Cleverly, the home secretary, slipped out a statement announcing the new migrant income threshold had been revised down, to £29,000 (AFP via Getty)

Rishi Sunak, the leader who was supposed to bring calm and competent administration to the turbulence of recent years, seemed to be taken by surprise by the publication last month of the figures for legal immigration.

Given that these statistics are published every six months, and so the annual figures always include one six-month period that has already been published, the rough scale of net immigration should not have been impossible to guess.

Yet the announcement by the Office for National Statistics that the total for last year had been revised up to 745,000 seemed to throw the government into a panic, and James Cleverly, the new home secretary, was sent to parliament 11 days later to announce a five-point plan to cut legal immigration.