Large parts of Britain would not function without migrants, but there are consequences for housing, GDP and productivity
Record NHS waiting lists. Flatlining living standards. Rising levels of long-term sickness. The dire state of the public finances. The list of problems inherited from the Conservatives by Keir Starmer is long, but near the top is how to respond to record levels of net migration.
According to official estimates released last month, the past three years have seen almost 2.4 million more people arrive in the UK than have left. Over the centuries, inward migration has been a feature of this country’s history, but the speed and scale of the recent increases are new. In the 1960s and 1970s, emigration tended to be higher than immigration and it has only been in the past quarter of a century that net migration began its upward trend. By way of comparison, net migration in the three years leading up the Brexit vote in 2016 stood at 865,000.
Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist
