This morning the government was able to celebrate some sorely needed good news. Long-term net migration has fallen sharply to 171,000 per year, down from 331,000 this time last year. Net migration is now less than a fifth of what it was at the peak of the post-Covid immigration wave. If we discount the Covid years it is the lowest that net migration has been since 2012.
It’s a remarkable achievement whichever way you cut it, though there is still clear room for improvement. The number of people immigrating for asylum has increased slightly from 87,000 to 88,000. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) also acknowledges that much of the fall in net migration has come from rule changes such as stopping care workers and students from bringing family members – changes which were implemented during the Sunak government.
So there are legitimate criticisms of Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s record on immigration. One criticism which is not correct is the charge levied by many people on social media and in the media that net migration is falling because of a wave of British emigration. The shadow home secretary said that British citizens are ‘leaving the UK on a massive scale, driven away by Labour’s high taxes’.
The truth is that British net emigration has fallen slightly since Labour came to power, from 257,000 in 2024 to 246,000 last year. Record high British emigration actually took place while the Conservatives were still in power, in 2021, when it was 283,000. Since the pandemic, British net emigration has been stable, while net emigration of non-EU nationals has surged since 2023.
It is true that slightly fewer British emigrants are returning after having left. But this is not the same as an emigration surge, or an ‘exodus’. As the ONS says, this could just be that young people are staying around in foreign countries after university for longer. That could be because other countries are becoming more attractive as immigration destinations, particularly now that so many offer digital nomad visas. There has been an uptick in emigration to Australia since 2021. In any event this gap has been growing every year since 2022, two years before Starmer became prime minister.
A vote of confidence in Keir Starmer’s leadership? Or perhaps a reflection of the fact that people do not tend to make major life decisions over small increases in income tax? Australia would still have sunnier weather even if dastardly Rachel Thieves had never come after family farm inheritance tax loopholes.
Whatever the reason, the facts just do not support the idea that British people are falling over themselves to flee Starmer’s Britain.
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