Migration: the Tories' electoral kryptonite?

Rishi Sunak is under pressure from Conservative MPs to "act now" to bring down net migration after new figures showed it hit a record 745,000 last year.

The prime minister is facing "Cabinet splits" after the new data prompted a "Conservative outcry", said the i news site. Speaking on his GB News show, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg apologised to the public for failing to meet Tory pledges on immigration and former home secretary Suella Braverman said the figures are a "slap in the face to the British public".

Speculation is mounting that the issue is the Tories' electoral kryptonite that will destroy the party's chances of overhauling Labour's big lead in the polls at the next election.

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'Do or die moment'

"Many are aghast" that Sunak is still "merely tinkering at the edges on visa requirements", said the Daily Mail, rather than "making them tough enough to ensure a dramatic fall in immigration".

Conservative MPs have warned that "this is a 'do or die' moment" because the party is "already floundering in the polls" and "if it can't be trusted to curb migration", it will "sink even lower", it added in a leader comment.

The predominantly red-wall New Conservative Group of MPs, led by Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, described the issue as an "existential" one for the party, said GB News. The site added that many Tory MPs feel they risk being "wiped out" by the issue at the next election.

Voters will not "easily forgive the Tories if, belatedly, they don’t start to dramatically bring down these troubling numbers", agreed The Sun. The Conservatives' "failure to deliver on migration promises" is "more serious" than not cutting taxes or taking too long to build hospitals, added Cates in The Telegraph.

Brexit could come back to bite the Tories, said Chris Mason, political editor of the BBC. As a member of the EU, there was "free movement of people around the club, including to and from the UK", he wrote, so politicians "could, and did, blame it for not being fully in control of immigration".

But at the next general election, the Conservative Party will have to "set out its approach to immigration knowing where the buck now stops", because "they can no longer blame anyone else".

'The ball may soon be in Labour's court'

Mason's argument applies to all the parties and some commentators believe Labour is far from unaffected by concern over immigration. 

In The Spectator, Stephen Daisley said that the issue will affect both main parties. "Vote Labour, get uncontrolled immigration. Vote Conservative, get the same," he wrote. "The message coming out of Westminster is that it doesn't matter how you vote, the policy will not change," he said.

The "continued failure" of the two main parties to address immigration is "storing up political and social problems for the future", he added, "by which point addressing them will be far more difficult and divisive".

"The Tories have failed on immigration,, wrote SNP member Joanna Cherry in The National. "But what will Labour do?" It's "going to be very difficult for the UK Government to get itself out of the hole it has dug", she argued, because "they have spent two years now and God knows how much money formulating a policy which looks unworkable". But the "reality" is that "the ball may soon be in Labour's court", and so "it is time for closer scrutiny of what they propose".

If Sunak wants to find comfort from history, he could do worse than look back at the 2015 general election. Writing for Compas in 2020, Rob McNeil, deputy director of the Migration Observatory, recalled that the issue was "electoral kryptonite" for both Conservatives and Labour and "served only to strengthen UKIP". But "in the end", said McNeil, the Tories secured a "surprise majority".