The party would rather brand itself a failure than accept that immigration has helped growth, and voters are relaxed about it
It feels like a lifetime ago that a Rochdale pensioner buttonholed Gordon Brown over what she called eastern Europeans “flocking” to Britain. Even then Gillian Duffy might not have made the headlines, except that later Brown was caught on mic calling her a “bigoted woman”, thus putting a memorable name and face to the endless debate about whether it’s racist to worry about immigration.
At the time, annual net movement to Britain was about 252,000, and Labour was starting to worry about a backlash. By the time David Cameron – who took office promising to reduce it to the “tens of thousands” – called his Brexit referendum in 2016, net annual migration was 335,000 , and Vote Leave was vowing to take back control of Britain’s borders (though carefully it never specified what “control” meant). It had fallen back almost to Brown-era levels when Boris Johnson succeeded Theresa May, and while he went into an election casually promising that overall numbers would fall, May’s former chief of staff, Nick Timothy, disclosed this week that ministers were told not to repeat that pledge since their laid-back new leader didn’t actually believe in it.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
