The government has pressed the panic button after official figures last month showed that net migration has tripled since the 2019 election, rising to a record 745,000 in 2022 and 672,000 in the 12 months to June this year.
Rishi Sunak has been pressured into a handbrake turn by noisy, right-wing Conservative MPs and even ministers such as Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister – once a close ally of the prime minister – who has picked up the baton after Suella Braverman’s sacking.
The appointment of James Cleverly as her successor raised the hopes of centrist Tory MPs that a sensible approach to immigration would prevail. But the home secretary has now announced what he called “the biggest-ever reduction” in legal migration to reduce it by 300,000 on last year’s figure.
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