Immigration: Cameron gets his 'ifs and buts' kicked

David Cameron will go into the general election with a renewed pledge to cap net immigration, despite serious doubts being raised by a series of Tory grandees and Cabinet ministers.

The PM has the backing of Home Secretary Theresa May, and both are described as “defiant” by The Times.

Some of their own colleagues would choose another D-word - “daft”, perhaps, or “deluded” – given last week’s figures from the Office for National Statistics showing net immigration had risen to 298,000 a year, the equivalent of a couple of small towns.

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In short, a new Tory pledge to cap immigration will have all the credibility of Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne pledging once more to give up drink. You know it’s not going to happen.

But May insists in a Times interview: “It is important because it is about not just dealing with those coming into the system but also about making sure that those people who shouldn’t live here actually leave.”

She refused to say exactly how the target would be expressed in the manifesto – presumably her team is working on a better phrasing than Cameron’s original vow on 14 April 2011 to get it down to “tens of thousands … “no ifs, no buts”.

“You will have to wait for the manifesto to see the exact words,” said May. “The idea of the net migration target will still be there. It will be measured [in the same way].”

May also hinted at reintroducing plans to make visitors from “high-risk” countries pay a bond before they are allowed into Britain and insisting that people should leave while immigration appeals are heard – both of which ideas are opposed by the Lib Dems.

May said every Whitehall department was touched by the burdens that come from soaring immigration - from the NHS and housing to roads and schools. Her message is that the rest of the Cabinet will have to pull their fingers out to make this work.

Cameron is reported to be exasperated with Cabinet colleagues who doubt his and May’s ability to honour a fresh target: “Why on earth are the only people who are really committed to our policy me and Theresa May?”

To which the chorus responds: “Because it’s not going to happen, Prime Minister!”

Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable tells The Times: “It was a target that could never be met because there were so many elements of it that you could never control — the most important of which was EU migrants, but also Brits returning from abroad, and asylum.”

Kenneth Clarke, the former Tory Cabinet minister, says the promise should not be repeated: “It would not be possible to achieve it without damaging our economy.”

David Willetts, the former higher education minister, said Cameron should have used Lib Dem resistance as an excuse to drop it. “I thought it got us off an undeliverable commitment.”

Cameron and May do have one supporter for retaining their apparently undeliverable pledge - the Daily Mail.

In an editorial, the Mail says Cameron needs to grasp that “he and the Home Secretary are far from alone. As successive polls have shown, the public are overwhelmingly behind them. For their sake, the answer to past failure is not to scrap the target, but to meet it.”

Or they can vote UKip.