Keir Starmer has flinched at the first hurdle when it comes to tackling UK immigration

News broke yesterday that the population of England and Wales had jumped by 610,000 in just twelve months, driven almost entirely by inward migration.

Although this was a record surge in the population, not seen since 1949 and the post-war baby boom, it came as little surprise. It had been patently clear for several years that the Tories had driven our country down a mass migration cul-de-sac from which they were unable to reverse.

The congestion caused by this project has undeniably reduced the quality of life for Brits up and down the UK. In the most literal sense, there are now 3 million more cars on our roads than there were back in 2010, with the number of vehicle miles having shot up by 7 billion between 2022 and 2023 alone.

Our living standards, measured by GDP per capita, are in the longest period of decline since records began. There are simply too many people for the resources that we have at our disposal. This is why one in five Brits are not registered with a dentist, the NHS has a waiting list of almost 8 million, and nearly 4 million young adults are still forced to live with their parents due to oversubscribed housing and rental markets.

The common sense of the British public allowed them to see that it is mass migration driving these problems. A key reason for the Tories’ general election defeat was because voters were fed up with net migration running at around 700,000 a year.

Polling conducted by the Centre for Migration Control on the eve of the general election found that half of all voters wanted a complete freeze to all non-essential immigration. This would mean that those awarded a work visa could not bring a coach full of dependants and family members with them. It would mean that universities could no longer allow foreign nationals to come and do courses on Harry Potter, critical race theory, or other flim-flam social science courses. It would mean that the Health and Care Visa, which has done little to alleviate the crisis in the care sector, would be abolished.

These are not drastic measures and would allow us to begin addressing some of the systemic problems facing our public services and housing sector with little-to-no economic consequence.

Since 2021, almost all migration into the UK has been from individuals that impose a net cost on the taxpayer, taking more out via public services like education and healthcare, than they actually contribute via taxes. Allowing this to continue would be simply piling more coal onto an already raging bonfire.

Unfortunately the Labour Party are in no rush to reverse this parlous state of affairs. Their plan to force businesses to hire British workers instead of foreign nationals has been put on ice until at least 2025, and their decision to outsource migration policy to an obscure quango, known as the Migration Advisory Committee, will allow big business to relentlessly lobby for laxer visa rules.

There are currently over 9 million 16-64-year-olds in the UK who are economically inactive, many desperately want to find a route into the job market but are simply unable to do so because of the competition posed by cheap overseas labour.

The Government cannot address this problem without a firm stick with which to incentivise big businesses and corporations to invest in the British workforce. Sadly, it has flinched at the first hurdle and today’s King’s Speech will do nothing to stymie our immigration-fuelled population growth that now looks set to enter a period of warp speed.