Sir Keir Starmer can either address the public's No1 concern — immigration — or pay the price at the ballot box
Numbers game
SOLVING the problem of massive migration into this country isn't rocket science.
Ministers can choose to allow more than a million a year to arrive — or not.
1
Letting students and low-skilled workers bring hundreds of thousands of dependants with them was the Tories' worst mistake.
The party's belated crackdown on this was the main factor behind yesterday's figures showing annual migration halved in 2024.
But the UK is still importing more overseas dependants who don't have a job than foreigners who do.
Just 14 per cent of all non-EU migrants last year came to work.
Half of social housing tenants in London are foreign-born. That's a huge bill for taxpayers.
And although overall numbers are down, importing another 431,000 people in 12 months is totally unsustainable.
Inevitably, there are wails from big business and Left-wing think-tanks that we need ever more migrants to fill job vacancies.
Well, how about getting some of the nine million people the State pays to sit at home off cushy benefits and back into work instead?
What is clear is that Sir Keir Starmer is going to have to go MUCH further than the measures on salary thresholds and skilled worker visas which he announced last week.
These will only cut numbers by another 100,000 — still above the level when a fed-up public voted for Brexit.
For the first time since 2016, immigration is once again the public's No1 concern.
High and dry
Working-class Brits are being sold short on our high streets.
Once thriving, they are now awash with depressing rows of vape shops, barbers and takeaways — especially in poor towns and coastal areas.
Even spending a penny is impossible as public toilets vanish.
But it's no wonder the high street is in terminal decline.
Struggling small business owners are mired in red tape and see their profits swallowed by punishing taxes.
Meanwhile their customers are put off by sky-high parking charges and an incessant war on cars.
Where's the plan to end this slow and painful death?
OK, amigos
FOR any Brits worried about mumbling 'grassy ar*e' instead of 'gracias' in Spain this summer, here's the only phrase you need to learn to pronounce correctly.
'Esa es MI toalla en la tumbona.'
That's MY towel on the sun lounger.
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