Immigration

Jeremy Corbyn is taking Labour ever further away from its traditional working class voters in the north and the midlands. As I say in The Sun today, the party now has a leader who didn’t sing the national anthem at St Paul’s, a shadow Chancellor who has praised the IRA, a shadow Home Secretary who thinks promising ‘controls on immigration’ is shameful and a shadow Foreign Secretary who sneers at those who fly the English flag. This presents Ukip with an open goal and a chance to do to Labour in the north and the midlands what the SNP did to in Scotland following the independence referendum. Indeed, half of Labour supporters who backed Brexit already say they won’t vote for the party again.

The Conservative party conference in Birmingham this week seemed a remarkably relaxed affair. The European question has been settled. Seldom has victory in the next-election looked more secure. The Labour conference in Liverpool had been a debacle, as the hard left set about picking off the remaining moderates. Diane James has resigned as Ukip leader after 18 days. It’s quite possible that her replacement could transform Ukip into a new working-class party — and then do to Labour in the north of England what the SNP has done to it in Scotland. One cabinet member put it well: the Tory party, he said, was like a piece of elastic that had been stretched much too far under David Cameron but has now been allowed to revert to a more natural position.

Why has ‘trust’ became such a dominant issue in British politics in the early 21st century? Is it the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Or the arrogant ineptitude that led to the financial crisis and the bank bailouts? Or the parliamentary expenses scandal? Or is it, more than the above, the failure of successive governments to meet their immigration targets? Trust in politics will fall to dangerously low levels if-immigration continues as is following this year’s referendum. This is why the government has acknowledged that some control over EU immigration must be part of the Brexit deal. The extent of these restrictions will be key to our agreement with the rest of the EU. The relationship between the Brexit vote and immigration is complex.

Theresa May began her statement on the G20 by talking about Brexit. She insisted that she wasn’t going to give a ‘running commentary’ or reveal the government’s negotiating hand as, she said, that would not deliver the best deal for Britain. In other words, we’ll all just have to wait and see what she negotiates. May’s insistence that she won’t rule anything in or out does lead to some rather bizarre moments. May repeatedly, and rightly, stressed the trade deals that the UK would seek to do outside the EU. But when Labour’s Emma Reynolds asked her to confirm that these deals would require leaving the customs union, May ducked the question.

'Brexit means Brexit', Theresa May has repeatedly reassured us. But it seems Brexit might not mean an introduction of a 'points-based' immigration policy which Vote Leave - and a number of cabinet ministers, including Boris Johnson - had called for during the referendum campaign. The Prime Minister said the system was no 'silver bullet' and planned to look 'across the board' for answers instead. As is becoming clearer - and as James Forsyth pointed out after May's Marr interview yesterday - the Prime Minister has a style in front of journalists which involves giving little away.

So, where are we at on Brexit? Well, we know that Theresa May wants immigration control as part of the deal which essentially rules out a Swiss or Norwegian style deal. But, as I report in The Sun, beyond that little is settled. As one Cabinet Minister said to me after the away day at Chequers this week, ‘The truth is that, at the moment, we’re still in the preparatory stage’. Cabinet Ministers were struck by how open the discussion was at Chequers. Unlike in the Cameron era, there was no early indication as to what the Prime Minister wanted the meeting to conclude. According to those present, one of the most forceful speakers was the Chancellor Philip Hammond. He emphasised that growth would be lower next year.

You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, said Abraham Lincoln. Theresa May faces a different question: for how long can you string along an entire electorate? She has been a defender of the pledge to cut net migration below 100,000 – a pledge that was adopted in a different era, before the Great Migration got underway. Cameron more or less got away with this – until he didn’t. During the referendum campaign, news that net migration hit 333,000 changed the debate and embodied the point under discussion. Cameron was haunted with this pledge throughout the campaign: how he’ll have regretted not dropping it when he had the chance. But will Mrs May? I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today.