Britain Records Sharp Fall in Immigration
Ten days ago, Britain's prime minister, Keir Starmer, vowed to take 'back control of our borders,' warning that uncontrolled immigration could result in the country 'becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.'
On Thursday, the government estimated that net migration had dropped by almost half in 2024 compared to 2023, to 431,000, suggesting that Britain's recent period of soaring immigration was ebbing, and perhaps even coming to an end.
The gap between Mr. Starmer's alarming language and the statistics underscored how rising populism, fueled in Britain by the politics of Brexit, has distorted the debate on immigration, sometimes leaving it strangely disconnected from the facts.
The sharp drop in net migration, which had been predicted, mainly reflected tighter measures on immigration put in place by the previous Conservative government, which had faced acute pressure to reduce a surge that began after Britain left the European Union.
Those same pressures are now bearing down on Mr. Starmer's Labour government, which announced a raft of measures earlier this month to further tighten migration rules and make it harder for newcomers to stay permanently in the country.
'The previous government gave Starmer a present wrapped in a bow,' said Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a research institute that specializes in migration and integration. 'Having failed to meet their own targets for cutting migration, they managed to cut it back in time for him to take credit for it.'
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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