Migration cuts are a luxury that the United Kingdom cannot afford

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The “fixation of immigration” in response to a decline of voters is an older British political tradition than universal suffrage. In fact, it is older than the modern passport and, in fact, why the modern passport exists in the first place.

In response to the arrival of Jewish immigrants in the late nineteenth century, the British government erected the first modern border. Similar political opponents have been continued, including the reaction to the movement of people within the British Empire in the postwar period and the country’s 2016 vote for Brexit after the arrival of large numbers from central and eastern Europe. Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement of A repression After a period of increase in immigration, it has made it part of an ancient ancient political heritage.

The United Kingdom is in no exceptional cases, although, of course, some of the ways it has taken (such as voting to leave the European Union) have surprised people by surprise. But the belief that the signaling of “things will change” should give rise to a grateful nation that chooses the Labor Party.

Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister of Labor to whom Starmer looks more like, was also part of the tradition of migration repression. Did an important and important retouching at his party secrecy When adopting the introduction of the previous government of the color bar, stripping some immigrants from the Commonwealth of their automatic right to live in the United Kingdom. While in office he also introduced variable positions for those who live outside the British Isles, introducing students’ rates abroad in 1967.

One way to look at the modern day’s strategy of work is to see it as part of this pragmatic push me immigration. This is the way work strategists often like to present it privately. Seen another way: the way Starmer likes to speak -it is a practical necessity and the end of a “failed experiment” in liberal immigration policy.

The two explanations are defective. One of the great differences between Wilson and Starmer is that the first directed a country that the defense spending was satisfied with the needs of an empire that was not, where the average person was 33 years old, the life expectancy was 70 years and the state pension began a few years earlier.

Starmer leads a country whose defense spending must go up, where the average person is 40 years old, where life expectancy is about 80 years and most of us can expect to have at least a decade of life during which we receive the state pension. (An additional problem is that for many of us, this period is one that we will fight with bad health, instead of enjoying a golden retirement, but this is another problem.)

The reduction of freedom of movement (of people, goods, capital or services) implies the cost for growth. He always has it. Governments should not pretend the opposite. The strips of the free movement of people, whether in 1905, in 1966 or 2019, have inevitably cost the country.

But the United Kingdom of 2025, with its largest population, its much larger state and its highest expectations on the standard and quality of public services, is even more sensitive to the hits of growth than the United Kingdom of 1905.This is true that the world is: that is why the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, no one has an idea of ​​open borders, has continued to broadcast visas and why the migration. Net is not a fall.

Starmer’s party has a policy position that is, slightly, unusual. Labor claims that the conservatives created a state too small: he did not build enough, provide enough GPS, hire enough school teachers, or order the excessively high lifetime cost. He also states that solving these problems can be done with fewer people than managed conservatives.

In addition, it seems that the Labor government believes that it can achieve all this with a stiffer labor market and increasing the cost of hiring through the Board. It may be that a great increase in the power learning power allows them to square this particular circle. Then it may not. If the future of artificial intelligence is one in which we work alongside the AI ​​instead of being replaced by him, they will never.

The difficult truth for work and, in general, for European nations, is that when you are as old as our nations are now, and their expectations for the size of the state are what they are now, the reduction of immigration has become a luxury good. It is what simply cannot afford if you are not willing to cut the cloth elsewhere. The United Kingdom had a taste of what would involve Rachel Reeves’ first budget and hated it. The country does not show signs of growing to please the drug in later doses. Other aged democracies should take note. The United Kingdom approach is a sign of what not to do.

Stephen.bush@ft.com