The well-known tendency of rats to vacate sinking ships is what comes to mind as we consider the departure from government of that sleek, well-fed rodent, Robert Jenrick.
His resignation letter was one for connoisseurs of the genre. “This is not a decision I have arrived at lightly, but one born of principle and reached after careful consideration and many months of trying to convince you of the merits of my position. You will retain my full support on the backbenches.” Don’t you love that bit about support from the backbenches? And principle?
What it looks like from here is a man who has calculated that, given the probable implosion of the Conservative Party come the election, the safest place to be is away from the front benches, having established himself as an opponent of light-touch immigration policy. It may also be that he really doesn’t care if his departure helps confirm the electorate in its opinion that the kindest thing you can do to the Conservative Party next year is to put it out of its misery. When the PM told his MPs that they must “unite or die” — a variant of the gag that they must hang together or swing separately — he is saying nothing less than the truth. And the factions on the Right of the party who imagine that there’s scope for another rebellion have simply lost any sense of how they look from outside, viz, unhinged.
Which is not to say that on the critical issue of immigration, Labour would do anything more effective; most of what the elfin Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, is suggesting about cracking down on criminal people smugglers has been tried, with limited success.
The Tories will soon be in opposition not least because they have no credibility on the most important issue
What Jenrick has correctly discerned is that immigration is a matter that really bothers people. For Conservative voters, it’s by far the most important issue, way ahead of the economy. Had the immigration minister resigned on the publication of the latest immigration figures, suggesting that 1.2 million people enter the country every year, or 672,000 net in the year to June, and 745,000 in 2022, it might have looked better. It’s legal immigration that bothers the electorate even more than the illegal sort and Jenrick’s measures, including banning social care workers from bringing their dependants (173,000 in one year), will cut the figure by just 300,000, which frankly isn’t transformative.
And it’s just peculiar for the PM, and indeed Suella and Robert J, to talk tough about bringing down immigration. The Tories, in case they’ve forgotten, have been in power since 2010. The problem may be that the electorate who voted for Brexit misunderstood what Boris Johnson was saying about Taking Back Control. No one spelled out to the Red Wall that what he actually had in mind with his points-based system was to increase immigration and to replace EU migrants with those from outside Europe. Those 1.2 million people a year coming here — even allowing for the war in Ukraine and the anti-democratic crackdown in Hong Kong — are squarely attributable to the Tory government which was originally elected on the basis that they aspired to immigration in the tens of thousands.
They’ve had control over non-EU immigration for a decade and there’s more of it than ever. How do they think they can get away with being indignant about it, as if they were in opposition. They will be, shortly, not least because they have no credibility on the most important issue.
Obviously, most sane people accept that immigration, by the right people in the right numbers, is a very good thing. Britain was transformed in the 1990s by the arrival of a million Poles. But what the employers who clamour for more immigration to fill vacancies rarely acknowledge is that while they get the benefits of cheap labour, it’s the taxpayer who shoulders the cost. And the costs of most of those who arrive here are considerable. One reason for the housing crisis is that three quarters of a million people came here in a single year. And that’s why it’s desirable to prevent incomers bringing family members with them. They need housing, they need healthcare, they need schooling. Yet much of the debate on immigration is premised on the notion that the social care workers never get old or sick or need care when they’re elderly. What the Conservatives over the past decade have not done is conduct an audit of the real benefits of immigration against the real costs. And the reason why the Government attracts so little sympathy as it ties itself in knots over immigration — not just Rwanda — is that this is a problem squarely of its making. It had the means of controlling numbers and it failed.
Suella Braverman, former home secretary, denied in a BBC interview this morning that the Tories had a death wish. But after Jenrick’s prudent departure, does anyone actually believe her? Come the election, we’ll find out.
