Latest news with #bigbusiness
The Sun
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Sun
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.
Telegraph
09-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Soft touch Britain is being left behind as the West hardens on immigration
Hammered by Reform, its poll ratings in freefall, Labour will soon unveil its immigration masterplan. It cannot come a moment too soon. The failure to control Britain's borders is fuelling widespread public dismay and a sense of betrayal. No country can sustain net migration levels of 728,000, as the UK saw in the year to June 2024. It's pushing our crumbling public services to the brink. Yet the early signs are that Labour will, at best, marginally tweak our useless system. This is in stark contrast to America and Europe, where the pendulum is swinging the other way, with immigration policies being dramatically hardened. There is a real danger that the UK could become the West's weak link. The consequences for the country, and for Keir Starmer politically, could be dire. The fairytale of open borders has disintegrated. In many Western countries the penny is finally dropping that caring about the volume of immigration isn't simply a 'far-Right' obsession. The idea that large-scale immigration can drive economic prosperity is no longer tenable: in practice, mass migration primarily benefits big businesses while depressing GDP per capita, increasing house prices and straining public services. Hopes that large influxes can defuse the West's demographic timebomb have been dashed; immigrants swiftly adapt to low native fertility rates. The assumption that the tolerant West could absorb hundreds of thousands of newcomers from contrasting cultures without stoking community tensions or risking the rise of fundamentalist enclaves now looks deeply naive. Yet still, Labour doesn't appear to have got the memo. How seriously can we take its vision to 'restore order to our broken immigration system', when the provisions in its forthcoming White Paper seem so modest? Some policies – migrants will have to be fluent in English and financially secure if they want to remain in Britain, for example – are so basic that it is flabbergasting they have not already been implemented. And the plan is unlikely to include the two measures necessary to decisively cut legal migration: raising salary thresholds and establishing a legally-binding cap on migration. If anything, Labour seems to be losing the limited momentum that Rishi Sunak gained towards the end of his premiership. In the year to June 2023, net migration exceeded 900,000, yet Labour have kicked into the long grass Tory plans to further increase the salary threshold for family members. They've also agreed a trade deal with India which could allow more Indian citizens to come to Britain and work, albeit temporarily as part of company transfers. This Government also lacks a robust, coherent plan to tackle illegal migration. When he came to power, Starmer shelved plans to send illegal migrants to Rwanda – leaving Britain without any concrete deterrence policy. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper seems to think a deal with France is a panacea, but French experts worry a breakthrough remains elusive. As Camille Le Coz of the think tank MPI Europe told me: 'For France to play ball, the UK will likely have to create more legal pathways for migrants. Besides, France has always wanted to go for an EU approach. The French might be more inclined towards an arrangement whereby other Member States also cooperate with the UK, for instance on readmission. But working with the UK on migration is not a priority for other European countries, whose eyes are more on control at EU external borders.' This flabby response to an issue of such importance looks even more baffling when you consider how other Western countries are now responding. Illegal immigration across America's southern border has plummeted around 94 per cent. 'The big lesson for Britain is that illegal immigrants react to realities on the ground,' a former Trump adviser told me. The US President is determined to use every lever in his power to ramp up deportations, whether that involves sending criminals to El Salvador or paying illegal migrants to leave. Trump may even eventually consider a systemic crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants – hitherto often a no-go area for Western politicians keen to keep corporate supporters on side. In Europe, Merkel's fanciful open borders vision lies in tatters. Germany is tightening border controls and plans to turn back asylum seekers without papers. Even the attitude in Brussels has drastically shifted, with EU leaders actively considering detention centres in third countries and tougher border security forces in gateway countries like Tunisia and Libya. They may even be willing to look the other way as Greece pursues potentially illegal Mediterranean pushbacks and Italy deports migrants to Albania. All the while, Britain flounders. Asylum hotel costs are spiralling. The number of small boat crossings have reached record levels. The great frustration is that there are many things we could do to bring this under control. We could renew the Rwanda plan. We could collaborate with other European countries, not just France, on pushbacks in the Mediterranean – a move that would not necessarily violate maritime law because the operations would be conducted in high seas rather than low water. It would also tackle the problem at source.
