Tories Attack Labour on Immigration, But Think Tank Warns Both Parties Failing on Borders

immigration
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Jack Montgomery

Leading Tory politician Michael Gove has slammed Labour’s “open borders” plan for immigration — but a leading immigration-sceptic think tank has noted Gove’s own party is also weak on the issue.

“One of the principal lessons of the Brexit referendum was the desire of the British people to end freedom of movement and bring immigration under democratic control,” the Cabinet Office minister recalled in an article for The Times, noting that even the Labour Party had briefly made a commitment that Free Movement immigration from the European Union “would end” after Brexit in its 2017 election manifesto.

“But two years on, Labour has reneged. This year its conference voted to ‘maintain and extend free movement rights’,” he observed.

“Labour is now explicitly in favour of unlimited and uncontrolled immigration. And Nicola Sturgeon is their staunchest ally,” he added, referring to the leader of the left-wing separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) — which bills itself as a pro-independence party despite being utterly devoted to the European Union, with all the sacrifices in sovereign control over immigration, agriculture, international trade, territorial fishing waters, and more which EU membership entails.

It is true that the Labour Party voted at their annual conference to not just retain Free Movement with the European Union, but to extend its open door provisions worldwide, shut all detention centres, give migrants full access to the National Health Service (NHS), and — perhaps not coincidentally — give voting rights to every non-citizen in the country.

“Labour have form for this, having previously presided over a fourfold increase in immigration,” Migration Watch UK founder Lord Green of Deddington told Breitbart London — but he did not let Mr Gove off the proverbial hook, either.

“With 30 million UK adults advocating a reduction, the Conservatives should really be appealing to that vote. Unfortunately the majority are politically homeless when it comes to immigration,” he said.

“Both major parties have been ducking the central issue which is the scale of immigration.

“The Conservatives have promised a reduction ‘to the tens of thousands’ in three subsequent manifestos — a promise which, after ten years of failure, they have scrapped,” he lamented.

Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, added: “Both main parties seem to be fighting shy of tackling the very serious issues around immigration. The Conservatives are critical of Labour but say nothing useful themselves – they just continue to duck the central issue which is the sheer scale of net migration.”

He pointed out that “the immigrant population of the UK has doubled to over nine million since the turn of the century, and the Conservatives themselves have presided over an increase of more than 2 million since 2010” — despite the face “90 per cent of Conservatives want to see immigration reduced”.

“Why are they missing a golden opportunity to distinguish themselves from Labour and appeal to a very large slice of the electorate?” he asked.

“Why cannot the leadership respond to their deeply felt concerns?”

However, far from announcing tougher border controls after Brexit, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has in fact announced he will quadruple economic migration to the British countryside, and is entertaining an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
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